Grand Korea Leisure (GKL) can’t catch a break. The South Korean casino operator with three gambling properties in the country has been trying to get things back to normal after COVID-19 forced it to halt operations last year, and a plan to reopen its venues at the end of December was thwarted. It pushed back the relaunch a few days, to January 4, but that didn’t work out as planned, either. With South Korea still combatting the coronavirus through strict countermeasures, GKL is now extending its shutdown once again, this time until early in February.

GKL’s three foreigner-only casinos were closed for all of December – the two properties in Seoul closed on November 24 and the Busan venue followed on December 1. At the time, the number of positive COVID-19 tests was constantly rising, sometimes with more than 1,000 new infections recorded each day in December. However, with South Korea implementing strict safety and health measures, the numbers are dropping rapidly and, according to information available this week, there are now only about 366 new infections. 

While the reversal is a good sign that the country’s measures are working, what can happen if restrictions are lifted too soon has already been seen. Across the U.S. and parts of Europe, new explosions of infections have been reported after restrictions were relaxed, forcing many areas to go back on more restrictive lockdowns for extended periods of time. South Korea continues to operate under what it calls an “alert level 2.5,” which provides several requirements. Gatherings of more than 50 people are prohibited and any social establishment has to close at 9 PM. Masks are required everywhere, except outdoors, and city-to-city public transportation is expected to operate at reduced capacities. 

The announcement of the new extension, which will be in place until February 4, also brought with it a hint at the financial damage GKL has suffered due to COVID-19. The company said yesterday that it will most likely record a loss in total casino sales of around $24.9 million as a result of the closure. This is based on the average daily net sales GKL recorded for the third quarter of last year.

In keeping with the legacy borne from the name, controversy over the demolition of the Trump Plaza Casino and Hotel in Atlantic City has crept up. The property has been shut down since 2014 and is now owned by Carl Icahn, the multibillionaire entrepreneur and Trump associate. Plans to bring down the building gained momentum following an Atlantic City order to raze the property last March, and a plan was hatched. An auction would be held that would benefit the non-profit Boys & Girls Club of Atlantic City, allowing the highest bidder to push the button when it came time to level Trump Plaza. However, with the auction set to end today, in-fighting has caused issues that have forced the auction to be canceled. 

Bodnar’s Auctions of New Jersey was brought in by Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small to oversee the auction, working out a deal that would have all the proceeds go to the Boys & Girls Club. The event began in the middle of last month and should have been able to run its natural course, which would have allowed it to end today. However, Icahn, or at least someone involved in his operations, reportedly caused a scene and forced the auction to be canceled. 

A statement provided by Bodnar’s gave the reason for the cancellation, explaining, “Shortly after announcing the auction, the attorneys for IEP AC Plaza LLC, a subsidiary controlled by Icahn Enterprises, sent a letter stating that IEP AC Plaza LLC was not on board with the situation and would in no way participate or help facilitate, citing safety issues. After exhausting every avenue to bring the parties together to make this exciting event happen, we received the final decision from IEP AC Plaza LLC that we must cease and desist.”

It’s unclear what type of “safety issues” might arise from pushing a button, but perhaps that will be revealed in time. As it stands now, the auction had attracted substantial attention, with the highest bid coming in at $175,000. This wasn’t quite the $1 million that had hoped to be raised, but it’s still a lot of money that would have gone to a worthy cause. Now, the Boys & Girls Club will need to figure out how to make up the difference after a bitter 2020. 

After more than a decade in the industry, Unibo co-founder Alex Wicen believes that you can’t put a price on the importance of player incentives. Wicen sat down with Calvinayre.com lead reporter Becky Liggero Fontana to elaborate on the types of player incentives that continue to be a drawcard in the gambling industry.

There’s more than one way to keep players involved. Wicen explained the differences between incentives that encourage brand loyalty, as opposed to the type that encourages players to continue spending. “All incentives are there to in essence get players staying longer or playing longer or having more fun. This hopefully leads to the player coming back more often and if you have more fun playing you should come back. But regulatory jurisdictional people are very much against the things, that kind of make you change the idea behind the casino game,” Wicen said.

https://youtu.be/dlJyqX1hMv0Video can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Alex Wicen believes you can’t put a price on player incentives (https://youtu.be/dlJyqX1hMv0)

Wicen elaborates further on how some casino bonuses aren’t providing the long-term value to players:

Just like last year at this time, it has taken awhile for casino operators in Macau to figure out if employee bonuses were going to be on the table. SJM Holdings got the ball rolling this year when it announced at the beginning of the month that it was going to stick to its long-running plan of offering extra cash to its employees, and three more operators have now spoken up, as well. 2020 was a difficult year because of COVID-19, but Macau’s casino operators are doing their best to live up to the promises they have made annually to their employees. 

SJM said a couple of weeks ago that it would be paying out the “living subsidy” in accordance with an employee’s tenure and salary with the company, with half of the payment to be made this month and the other half in July. MGM China was the next operator to join in, announcing yesterday that it was prepared to give a “discretionary bonus” to certain non-management personnel. Those eligible to receive the money, approximately 90% of the workforce, can expect to start seeing the payments within the next couple of weeks. 

MGM China will offer one month’s salary to those employees, with plans to distribute the bonuses before and after the upcoming Chinese New Year (CNY) next month. There will be two installments distributed to all of the eligible workers, one before CNY on February 12 and the other after. However, exact dates weren’t provided. 

MGM China Executive Director and co-Chair Pansy Ho showed her appreciation for those employees who have helped the company overcome the challenging year, adding, “We thank our team members from the bottom of our hearts for staying united, as well as being loyal [to] contribute their best to the company.”

To those who look carefully enough, history is poetry. Most often the poem woven by the sands of time looks nebulous at first, only to become clarified later on in hindsight, when the fuller pattern emerges. It is perhaps fitting that Sheldon Adelson passed away just about one week before the fall of his largest political benefactor, U.S. President Donald Trump, from power. The Jewish mourning period of Shiva, literally “Seven” (it’s the same word in both languages actually), ended yesterday for the Adelson family, and Trump now has 24 hours to tie any loose ends and get out of Washington DC.

Coincidentally or not, depending on how you see history, his second most notorious political ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has also fallen on the rocks at about the same time, again, as the Netanyahu government coalition has fallen and the fourth Israeli election in two years will take place in March. When three world titans all fall at the same time, while the entire global economy is so obviously being completely restructured in unprecedented ways, it is hard not to see Adelson’s passing at precisely this time as part of a wider historic transition into something else. What exactly, we do not yet know, but the old world order looks like it’s being swept away. It’s a heavy, dangerous gauntlet to pick up, and whoever raises it is going to have to be sharp, nimble, and most of all humble. None of us know how this is going to end, least of all the people on top.

The damage to Las Vegas Sands over the last three quarters has been absolutely immense. Lockdowns hurt everyone, even and especially the world’s most powerful. It may not seem like that from an individual consumer standpoint. The rich still have their yachts and mansions and all the rest, but consider this. Las Vegas Sands’ retained earnings since inception, representing the amount of value produced by the company in pure profit, has been obliterated by nearly two thirds over just the last three quarters. Two more quarters of this and the amount of money that Sands will have made over the course of its entire history will be less than zero. That’s how quickly the most powerful can fall. Perhaps Adelson has been mercifully spared the worst of it.

It is perhaps also fitting that Adelson, the arch enemy of online gambling, has left this world at precisely the time that online gambling is pretty much the only remaining functional outlet for the industry, while his casinos are being smashed like never before. This is now a world that Adelson perhaps, deep down, no longer really wanted to be a part of. It is very difficult for us to see him as simply an elderly man, the powerhouse that he was, but as most of us are not octogenarian billionaires and most of us never will be, we simply do not know what it’s like to see your empire under attack and your political allies get flushed out and your competitors rise in a world under paralysis.

It’s almost business as usual for the Pearl River Resort’s sportsbook, nearby Philadelphia, Mississippi. After months of closure, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians’ run casino is now humming along just as it did before Covid-19.

“When college football came back, followed by the NFL, we had everything going on, and that’s when everything started picking up for us,” Director of Sportsbook Chris Hopwood said. “All of the customers started coming back, and it became fun again.”

“Our location at Bok Homa was really busy, and here it slowly started coming back because we’re more of a transient, tourist place, so we get big crowds from Louisiana and Alabama,” added Hopwood. “We were a little slow to start with here, and if you watch our table games or slots, it’s still a little slow, because those customers haven’t quite come back, but for me, it’s been going full steam ahead.”

Employees have returned from furlough, customers are coming in, and it’s almost the same as it ever was. “It feels the same, except we have to wear masks now,” said employee Toni Eaves.

Esports betting has grown and grown during lockdown, and with more money flowing into the industry during the global COVID-19 pandemic, games such as League of Legends, Fortnite and Call of Duty have been popular destinations for sports bettors looking to broaden their betting scope.

Which game has been the most popular across the board? Well, it’s a close run thing further down the list, but LOOT.BET have looked at all the analytics and come up with some great information about exactly where esports bettors money has been going in the last 12 months.

Over the past year, as you can see below, it’s been a year dominated by bettors investing in CS:GO, or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to you and me.

As you can see, CS:GO saw by far the most money changing hands, with 53% of the total money placed on Esports during this period. Coming in second was the phenomenally popular Dota 2 with 35%, and those two games were predictably trailed by some distance as League of Legends (LoL) scooped up a further 7% of the bet slips.

Lithuanian player Paulius Plausinaitis took control of the $1,700-entry WSOPC Winter Main Event on Sunday to take victory and claim the $1,236,361 top prize on GGPoker.

With nine players making the final table from a mammoth 6,395 total entries, the biggest prizes of the $10.3 million prizepool were up for grabs on Sunday and some superstars of the game were at the virtual felt on GGPoker to battle it out for the title. 

The action was fast and furious, with the final playing out over just three hours and it was ‘BetAddict’ from Israel who busted first. Starting with just 20 big blinds, they couldn’t resist moving all-in with ace-king and the pocket jacks of Artem Prostak held after the Belarussian called to reduce the field to eight.

Next to go was ‘DaiMing141319’ of China, who dwindled down to just a couple of blinds before they moved all-in with king-queen, which couldn’t hold against WSOP bracelet winner Joseph Cheong’s eight-ten. Cheong scored a second consecutive elimination when Alexandru Papazian lost out with ace-five as Cheong had pocket jacks soon afterwards.

Last week, we spoke to The Secret Coach about how kids who are missing playing football can turn their hobby into more of a career choice during lockdown.

This week, we’re looking at the top end of the best league in the world and asking them which EPL teams have come out of COVID stronger.

The Secret Coach is a professional football coach in English football… who will remain anonymous. The Secret Coach has worked with some of the biggest names in the game, been through the coaching badge courses and is currently part of the coaching team at an English league side… and that’s all we’re telling you. As ever, this week, The Secret Coach pulls no punches! 

We start by tackling two of the favourites for the Premier League title. Liverpool and Manchester United have emerged largely unscathed in terms of Coronavirus and sit comfortably in the top four and are chasing that title. Is that a coincidence or evidence that staying as virus-free as possible has a positive effect on each team’s title chances? 

UK online gambling operators’ claims of a thriving unauthorized black market are being refuted by their own regulator ahead of the government’s review of gambling laws. 

Shortly before Christmas, the UK’s Betting & Gaming Council (BGC) lobby group circulated details of a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report that claimed some 200k UK punters spent around £1.4b on unauthorized internationally licensed online gambling sites in a 12-month period spanning 2018 and 2019. 

The PwC report further stated that internationally licensed sites not authorized to conduct business in the UK accounted enjoyed 27m visits from UK punters during the period in question, equal to 2.5% of all online betting visits. These sites also claimed a 9% share of all UK gambling search results. 

BGC CEO Michel Dugher claimed these statistics should help guide the government’s review of the Gambling Act 2005, which promises to severely clip the wings of UK-licensed sites. Dugher said the PwC report demonstrated “the danger of unintentionally driving punters into the arms of the illegal, online black market – which offers none of the protections of the regulated sector.” 

Thailand’s government is finally considering relaxing its longstanding ban on casino gambling as a means of limiting further spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. 

Last week, Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha authorized the formation of two committees: one to examine the role of human traffickers smuggling migrants into the country, the other to probe how local authorities are investigating cases of illegal gambling. 

Both committees are intended to find ways of limiting further spread of COVID-19, the rates of which have doubled in the past month. Meanwhile, pandemic fears and quarantine requirements have decimated Thailand’s international tourism industry, with predictable effects on the government’s tax revenue. 

Police in Nonthaburi, Thailand’s second-largest city, raided an illegal gambling den last week, while police in the resort town of Pattaya raided another illegal gambling hub in a condominium complex. The gambling committee has been asked to probe whether police turned a blind eye to these and other gambling dens that operate with seeming impunity across the county. 

The latest results in the English Premier League have ruffled the feathers of many clubs, with Liverpool plummeting to 4th place after the latest round of fixtures.  

Can the Merseysiders return to form at home to a stubborn Burnley side and will Manchester United or Manchester City take advantage of their midweek game against Fulham or Aston Villa respectively?  

Let’s take a look at two games in particular and then provide you with a takeaway tip for each Premier League game taking place.  

Leicester City vs. Chelsea (Tuesday, 8.15pm GMT kick-off)  

Last year was hard on Sega Sammy Holding, the Japan-based arcade and pachinko operator. Over the first six months of the year, the company saw a drop in sales of around 33.4% because of the global COVID-19 pandemic and needed ways to stave off a further loss in revenue. It came up with an early retirement scheme for its employees that it expected to do the trick, and the results are in. An overwhelming number of staff members have agreed to retire and start collecting benefits.

Sega Sammy had expected to find around 650 employees willing to take early retirement. That would have been a fairly sizable chunk of the workforce, which included approximately 9,051 full-time and contract workers. All were given the opportunity to participate in the program, provided they announced their intentions in time. 729 employees ultimately signed up, according to a company announcement, by the deadline of December 25 of last year. They will now pack up and go home as of February 28.

In order to prepare for the expenses tied to offering retirement, Sega Sammy had allocated around $96.3 million of its funds. However, despite receiving a larger-than-expected response, the company believes it will only spend around $91.5 million. Because the early retirement scheme begins at the end of next month, the expenses will be reported as extraordinary losses when Sega Sammy closes out its current fiscal year this March. 

The drop in sales is only a temporary setback from which Sega Sammy fully intends to recover. The idea of continuing to offer pachinko machines in Japan might be losing its appeal, especially as regulations become tighter and public interest becomes weaker, and the gambling operator has other ideas in mind. It is currently hoping to get involved in the country’s integrated resort (IR) market once it is up and running. It has already expressed interest in the activity and is using the early retirement plans as a way to reduce expenses in anticipation of future IR involvement. The company asserts, “Voluntary retirement is believed necessary to realize cost reductions focusing on fixed costs and building a more efficient system in order to achieve an early recovery of profits and sustainable growth in the future.”

Larry Flynt has been called many things over the years and tenacious is most likely a label he carries proudly. The founder of Hustler magazine got into gambling when he began to help launch card rooms in California, but, just like with his pornography empire, ran into trouble. And, also like his risqué magazine, wasn’t willing to back down from his goals. California has a rule about who can own casinos and Flynt wasn’t happy when the state tried to shut him down. He launched a fight against the state several years ago and, despite losing round one, came back throwing punches. This time, he scored a minor victory, and it was time for California to try to enter the ring swinging. Apparently, it missed.

California implemented a law in 1986 that forbids owners of casinos in the state from purchasing casinos across state lines. Flynt is behind the Hustler Casino and the Lady Luck Casino in Gardena, which he operates with Haig Kelegian Sr. and Haig Kelegian Jr. When the junior’s wife purchased a casino in Seattle, Washington, California came knocking on the door, issuing fines to the family for breaking that ownership law.

At some point in the past, the law may have had its merits. It was initially designed to prevent the mafia from taking control of the gambling industry in the U.S., but, for the most part, that logic doesn’t hold up anymore.Flynt, the Kelegians and a team of lawyers went after the state, arguing that its laws were not consistent with federal interstate commerce laws, which are written into the U.S. Constitution.

The judge presiding over the battle, U.S. District Judge John Mendez, agrees. California had tried to have the Flynt lawsuit dismissed; however, is going to let it continue to run, explaining, “If a state statute ‘directly regulates or discriminates against interstate commerce, or … its effect is to favor in-state economic interests over out-of-state interests,’ it is ‘struck down . . . without further inquiry.’ If, however, a state statute ‘regulates evenhandedly’ and ‘has only indirect effects on interstate commerce,’ courts proceed to ask whether those indirect effects ‘impose a significant burden on interstate commerce.’” Flynt has been able to repeatedly make a case for his fight, with court judges agreeing that the continued loss of business is grounds for the challenge to remain active. California assumedly didn’t take into consideration Flynt’s tenacity when it decided to fight him on this issue and the multimillionaire has repeatedly proven that he isn’t willing to back down when he thinks he’s right. This time, once again, it seems he’s finding more legal footing to continue his battle.

Gibraltar has always been somewhat of the red-headed stepchild for the U.K. Located at the southern end of Spain, the U.K. claims ownership of the territory, but doesn’t want to spend a lot of resources to maintain it. It’s because of this that Gibraltar acts almost completely as an autonomous territory, which has led the way for it to become a favorite among gambling operators. With Brexit approaching last year, the fate of Gibraltar was unknown, but it now looks like the separation of the U.K. from the European Union (EU) may have been one of the best things ever for The Rock. Not only is Gibraltar’s gambling industry expected to grow, but the territory might also be considered a Schengen Area.

As the U.K. and the EU were finalizing their divorce last month, the subject of what would happen to Gibraltar came up. At the last minute, British and Spanish authorities threw together a “political framework” that became the foundation of a Gibraltar-specific treaty between the territory and the EU. That, as things are progressing right now, would establish The Rock as a Schengen Area, adding it to a list of 26 EU countries that allow unfettered movement, tourism and employment. 

That’s pretty big news for a pretty small island and would give Gibraltar a lot of independence. This, according to Andrew Lyman, would be a catalyst for gambling expansion in Gibraltar and would lead to major growth of The Rock’s economy. Lyman is the executive director of the Government of Gibraltar’s Gambling Division and recently shared his predictions with CasinoBeats.

Lyman fully expects Gibraltar’s gaming industry to “grow and thrive” once all the dust settles from Brexit, driven by the acceptance of the territory in the Schengen Area. He explained to CasinoBeats that the inclusion will benefit both Gibraltar and Spain since it would guarantee the “continued shared prosperity between Gibraltar and the ‘campo’ in which some 15,000 workers live in Spain, but work in Gibraltar.”

Genting U.K., a subsidiary of Genting Malaysia Bhd (GenM), is finding the COVID-19 situation extremely problematic. It was forced to shutter its casinos in Bristol, Margate and Torquay, as well as reduce its staffing levels at operations in Birmingham, Blackpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow and London, but is about to add another property to the mix. GenM is being forced to close its Genting Casino Southport in England because of continued issues caused by the coronavirus, and 38 employees are going to need to find new jobs. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused problems for casino operators across the globe, but some have been able to survive better than others. GenM isn’t one of those, with the U.K. repeatedly being bombarded by coronavirus issues that seem to be relentless. The original coronavirus has morphed into at least two other variations and they continue to pound away at the U.K. economy. One already forced area casinos to go back on lockdown, exacerbating an already precarious situation. 

GenM said in a press release about the closure last week, “We can confirm that we have started a consultation process with all of our staff at Genting Casino Southport, with 38 employees being put at risk of redundancy. As we all know, the coronavirus pandemic has created unprecedented challenges right across the leisure industry and whilst we have worked tirelessly over the past ten months to sustain the business as best as possible, permanent club closures have, unfortunately, been simply unavoidable.”

According to GenM, the company has a total of 43 casino licenses in the U.K. and has operated 42 casinos until the global pandemic turned everything upside down. It also operates two hotels in the country, as well as online gambling platforms gentingcasino.com and gentingbet.com. 

Genting U.K., a subsidiary of Genting Malaysia Bhd (GenM), is finding the COVID-19 situation extremely problematic. It was forced to shutter its casinos in Bristol, Margate and Torquay, as well as reduce its staffing levels at operations in Birmingham, Blackpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow and London, but is about to add another property to the mix. GenM is being forced to close its Genting Casino Southport in England because of continued issues caused by the coronavirus, and 38 employees are going to need to find new jobs. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused problems for casino operators across the globe, but some have been able to survive better than others. GenM isn’t one of those, with the U.K. repeatedly being bombarded by coronavirus issues that seem to be relentless. The original coronavirus has morphed into at least two other variations and they continue to pound away at the U.K. economy. One already forced area casinos to go back on lockdown, exacerbating an already precarious situation. 

GenM said in a press release about the closure last week, “We can confirm that we have started a consultation process with all of our staff at Genting Casino Southport, with 38 employees being put at risk of redundancy. As we all know, the coronavirus pandemic has created unprecedented challenges right across the leisure industry and whilst we have worked tirelessly over the past ten months to sustain the business as best as possible, permanent club closures have, unfortunately, been simply unavoidable.”

According to GenM, the company has a total of 43 casino licenses in the U.K. and has operated 42 casinos until the global pandemic turned everything upside down. It also operates two hotels in the country, as well as online gambling platforms gentingcasino.com and gentingbet.com. 

It’s looking more likely, despite a recent setback due to an increase in COVID-19 cases, that Japan is going to be able to make progress this year with its plans to introduce integrated resorts (IR) to the country. There has already been movement since the new year started, with Nagasaki already launching its request-for-proposal (RFP) process and Yokohama set to get its RFP initiative going in the coming days. As Japan’s gambling market begins to take shape, activity is beginning to pick up and different elements are becoming clearer.

Wakayama is one of the areas that wants to host an IR and, last Wednesday, two casino operators confirmed their interest. The prefecture’s IR Promotion Office announced that Clare Best Neem Ventures and SunCity Group Holdings Japan Co. have submitted the required documents to support their spots as potential candidates. Both had already been selected in a previous round of review and, even as there is still no guarantee Wakayama will be among the first three locations selected to host an IR, the companies are ready to go the distance. The prefecture is expected to make a decision sometime during the spring, with the hopes of being chosen so it can introduce a casino within five years.

Oshidori International Development LLC, which wants to win the rights to be included in Nagasaki’s IR scheme, now has someone to help lead the way. It has brought in Keigo Nakatani to be its chief operating officer, turning to an economics major and business development executive that the company believes will give it a leg up on the competition. Says Oshidori Chairman, President and CEO Alejandro Yemenizian, “Oshidori’s rule is not only to create the best IR resort in Asia, but also to fulfill its social responsibilities to Nagasaki and Kyushu through its IR business, and to create a new society together with local people using IR as a catalyst. In order to achieve this, we believed that a person who can carefully discover the potential of the region and present it to the world is the right person to take office.”

Yokohama has had continued difficulty convincing some residents of the merits of an IR. There is tangible polarity over the idea and some residents have gone so far as to try to oust the mayor, Fumiko Hayashi. While that attempt looks to have fallen flat, there is hope that putting a different leader in place will have the desired effect. The city of Nagasaki will need to elect a new mayor later this year and City Councilman – and IR opponent – Masataka Ota is ready to campaign to be the city’s next leader. He will run unaffiliated and said in a recent statement, “I have been saying that [IR] facilities, including casinos that Yokohama City is attracting, are not good. The city council also rejected an ordinance to conduct a public vote on whether or not to vote, and he decided to run for office because he wanted to become mayor and play politics for citizens. If I become mayor, the casino will be over immediately.”

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (ECBI) have silenced dissent concerning their recent $250 million purchase of the Caesars Southern Indiana casino. Their Tribal Council voted down a formal protest in a January meeting.

Attorney Robert Saunooke, a member of the tribe, filed the formal protest against the purchase with the backing of 14 other Tribal members. They believe the December 17 vote to approve the deal was rushed into, wasn’t the best deal that could have been struck, and didn’t allow the voting members enough time to consider the facts.

Taking the matter seriously, it was the first item discussed in the tribe’s January 14 meeting. The protest was ultimately voted down 56-44. The EBCI Attorney General’s office also agreed with the original deal. Principal Chief Richard Sneed defended the merits of the December 17 vote:

“This decision was thoroughly vetted and every decision we make is in the best interest of the Tribe…if anyone wants to sit down and go over the numbers, we’re happy to do that. The assertions made in Mr. Saunooke’s resolution, they’re all patently false.”