Burlywood Capital partner Andrew Burnett predicts that innovation in the casino industry in 2021 could potentially help spur a recovery. Burnett would be one to know, with more than twenty years-experience on the finance side of the casino and gambling industry. Burnett took some time out to reminisce with long-time pal and Calvinayre.com lead reporter Becky Liggero Fontana on what he thinks may happen in the industry in 2021.

“We see some products coming along which are brand new to the market and have got the potential to shake up the industry a little bit in the U.S, so it might be worth keeping an eye out for some of those products and new entrants that can really make a bit of a bit of a blast in the market perhaps over the next 12 months,” Burnett said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUR8DWFtngA&feature=youtu.beVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Andrew Burnett predicts an industry shakeup in 2021 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUR8DWFtngA&feature=youtu.be)

“Online gambling has had a very good pandemic so in terms of sector rotation I just think you could see the sector stepping back a little bit over the next 12 months. I think we’re long due to see some new product innovation and I think there’s been a lot of B2 businesses that have prospered over the last 12-24 months,” he added.

South Korean casino operator Landing International Development is wearing egg on its face after a staffer apparently absconded with millions of dollars over the holidays. 

In an ‘inside information announcement’ to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Tuesday, Landing somewhat sheepishly revealed that it discovered Monday that some KRW14.56b (US$13.4m) in company funds maintained in the South Korean holiday island of Jeju was ‘missing.’ 

Landing went on to explain that the company is “unable to reach the employee-in-charge of the funds.” Landing said it has alerted South Korean police regarding the incident and an investigation is underway. Landing’s board of directors is also “gathering information in relation to the incident.” 

Landing operates the Jeju Shinhwa World resort casino on the island, one of South Korea’s larger foreigner-only gambling venues. Like most of its local rivals, Jeju Shinhwa saw its fortunes slide as the pandemic caused the flow of foreign gamblers to slow to a trickle. 

Online gambling firms are being targeted with ransomware by Chinese state-sponsored hackers in what is either a dramatic shift in priorities or simply greedy techs looking to pad their meager salaries. 

A report by Israeli cybersecurity firms Profero and Security Joes details a series of ransomware attacks against five unidentified online gambling companies earlier this year by a group alternately known as Advanced Persistent Threat 27 (APT27) or Emissary Panda. 

The report builds on a separate report this February by Trend Micro, who identified a Chinese-led hacking group known as Winnti (aka APT41), which until that point had a history of going after online gaming (not gambling) firms. The APT27 attacks used similar DRBControl malware to gain access targeted servers but APT27 was traditionally focused on corporate espionage rather than financial gain. 

The APT27 attacks also differed in that, once the hackers had gained access to a specific server, they utilized the BitLocker encryption tool built into Windows to deny access to the servers by their rightful owners rather than employ a custom piece of ransomware. 

Maryland’s six casinos had a disappointing December after the two largest operators saw their already limited capacity further reduced mid-month due to the state’s soaring COVID-19 infection rate. 

Figures released Tuesday by the Maryland Lottery & Gaming Agency show statewide casino gaming revenue of nearly $119.4m in December, down 20% from the same month last year and $11m below November 2020’s total.

The state’s two largest casinos – MGM National Harbor and Cordish Gaming’s Live! Casino & Hotel – saw their already pandemic-restrained capacity of 50% reduced to just 25% last month. The state’s third-largest casino, Caesars Entertainment’s Horseshoe Baltimore, was already limited to 25% capacity when December began. 

Despite those limitations, National Harbor reported gaming revenue of $48.5m in December, down only 22.5% year-on-year, while Live! fared even better, falling just 17.2% to $42.9m. The perpetually challenged Horseshoe, on the other hand, was down nearly one-third year-on-year to just $12.7m. 

Cryptocurrency-funded slots play may be coming to a land-based casino near you after International Game Technology (IGT) received a patent for expanding existing machine-based payment options. 

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that IGT had received a patent for a method of transferring funds from an individual’s cryptocurrency wallet to a casino loyalty/rewards account. IGT, one of the casino sector’s primary developers/manufacturers of electronic gaming machines, has yet to comment on the report. 

IGT did announce Tuesday that it had successfully cleared the final stage of Nevada regulatory approval for its Resort Wallet carded cashless module. The system allows players to use a casino loyalty card to transfer cash between a secure digital wallet and various gaming products – slot machines, gaming tables, sportsbooks, etc. There’s also a phone-based ‘cardless cashless’ version of the Resort Wallet.  

IGT’s patent is the latest move by the US land-based gaming industry toward a cashless environment, which has the backing of the gambling sector’s primary lobby group. The shift has taken on more urgency and offered more appeal as the pandemic made the idea of handling cootie-contaminated cash seem even more ill-advised.

Gambling operator Churchill Downs Incorporated (CDI) is replacing its fledgling sports betting/iGaming brand with its far more established race betting brand as it tries to run with the big boys in the US online market.

On Tuesday, CDI announced that it was moving to “a single brand strategy for its online wagering segment,” which currently encompasses both the popular TwinSpires advance deposit wagering site and the far less familiar BetAmerica brand, which is currently operational in only six states.

Henceforth, TwinSpires will be the brand under which all CDI’s online gambling operations are conducted, starting with the expected launch later this month of CDI’s online sportsbook and iGaming platform in Michigan. After that, retail and online sportsbooks in Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania will undergo a similar identity refresh.

CDI president/COO Bill Mudd said TwinSpires “has consistently delivered over 13 years” and this legacy “offers a unique point of difference in a competitive space.” Translated, that means CDI has belatedly realized that brand recognition is a major differentiator in the rapidly expanding US sports betting market and BetAmerica just isn’t gaining traction. 

Poker is represented on television in many different guises. It’s the elite game in the European Poker Tour, it is a game where you can lose your life as well as your chips in Casino Royale and sometimes, it’s a cheap injection of colour into a movie that is lacking it, such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.  

But what happens when poker, an already funny game, enters a show such as Seinfeld? The smash hit ‘comedy about nothing’ that ran from 1989 to 1998 featured poker and gambling in a number of forms through the series. But did it do it well? Let’s take a look back at those moments first, courtesy of Zachary Elwood’s excellent montage.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2wRV58SXzkVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Seinfeld – All The Poker and Gambling (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2wRV58SXzk)

Oddly for a sitcom, gambling and Seinfeld went together like soup and Nazis in the comedy series that would later come to define the 1990s in more ways than one. In a way, this comes directly from the characters, all of whom has critical flaws that are not just left to fester and mutate, but actively encouraged to grow by the petri-dish of the foursome’s collective relationship.  

The latest GGPoker Super MILLION$ final table takes place today and there are legends of the felt in with a chance of winning the title.

With a massive top prize of $448,842 on the table, it is the former WSOP bracelet winner Enrico Camosci who goes into the final with a lead, holding 4,798,699 chips (80 big blinds) but it’s a slim one and chasing him down are two of the biggest names at the felt in Swedish player Niklas Astedt (4,579,388, 76 big blinds) and Brazilian Rui Ferreira (3,435,920, 57 big blinds).

Astedt in particular could hardly be more motivated to claim the top prize, with his eight appearances at Super MILLION$ final tables without winning a title a record that he’ll be anxious to eradicate. The Swede goes into play second in chips and just a three-bet off the lead.

Camosci himself will be looking to add to what has already been a great year, with a 2020 World Series of Poker bracelet from the Online Series already winging its way to him. Behind Camosci, however, are some other big, big names. Two of the biggest will be four-time World Poker Tour Main Event winner Darren Elias (2,660,693, 44 big blinds), who comes into play fourth in chips, has the heart of a lion and is one of the most skilful poker players on the planet.

China’s war on ‘cross-border’ gambling claimed a lot of scalps in 2020, although a new report claims 11m Chinese citizens still gamble online on any given day. 

On Tuesday, China’s Ministry of Public Security issued a statement on its anti-gambling activity in 2020, which saw the Ministry resolve more than 3,500 cross-border (land-based and online) gambling cases and arrest some 7,500 suspects. The Ministry also claimed to have ‘destroyed’ 2,260 gambling platforms, 890 technical support hubs, 1,160 marketing affiliates and 1,960 illegal payment platforms and ‘underground’ banks. 

Of the arrested individuals, over 600 Chinese nationals were detained overseas, thanks to increased cooperation between the Ministry and its counterparts in the Philippines, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam and other Asia-Pacific countries. 

The Ministry also hailed its ‘blacklist’ of countries that lure mainland residents abroad to gamble, while still refusing to identify the countries that have been labeled with this scarlet letter. The Ministry warned mainland residents to “consciously resist” traveling abroad to gamble or to participate in illegal online gambling from the mainland. 

It’s still looking like Japan is going to make real progress with its integrated resort (IR) plans this year after having met a few challenges along the way. If the rollout continues as expected, the gaming world might know by the end of the year some of the details on the who, what, when and where of the projects. Yokohama, Osaka and Nagasaki are still on the shortlist of locations to host a venue, and Yokohama and Nagasaki are particularly busy trying to put their plans together. However, not everyone is on board. 

The mayor of Yokohama, Fumiko Hayashi, isn’t making any friends. She’s already been a target of attempts to be removed from office because of her unwavering support for an IR, and her latest move isn’t sitting well with her detractors, either. Hayashi, who has led the city since 2009, promised that she would allow a public vote on the subject of an IR if enough signatures were gathered on a petition to support the vote. The group behind the initiative, Yokohama Citizens’ Group to Decide on a Casino, accepted her challenge, gathered the voted – more than had been required – and presented its results to the mayor. That was when Hayashi pulled a fast one. 

The mayor decided that there was no need to allow the ballot referendum, asserting that it would cause further delays in a project that is going to proceed, no matter what. She explained, “A referendum means shelving the discussions that have occurred to date. Based on the discussions of the council, it is important to proceed steadily with the legal procedures.” 

The citizen-led opposition group can still petition the council to allow the referendum; however, it shouldn’t get its hopes up. A representative of the group will reportedly make that petition this Thursday at a city council meeting, after which Yokohama’s IR course will be better understood.

After several delays over the past couple of years, the new Majestic Las Vegas hotel is finally about to emerge on the Las Vegas skyline. The project is the brainchild of developer Lorenzo Doumani, who is converting the site of the former Clarion hotel into a massive property. Unless something happens between now and then, construction will start on the new hotel this July and will take around three years to complete. 

The Clarion, two blocks off the Las Vegas Strip, was razed in 2015 to make way for a new project. Doumani received approval for his hotel in 2019, but the onset of the COVID-19 debacle forced all plans everywhere out of whack. Now that there is the glimpse of a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s time to get back on track, even if it’s going to be slow-going. 

The new property has been designed, to a degree, with future pandemics in mind. It stands 620’ tall and will offer 720 rooms and a medical spa – but no gaming. There will be 35 corporate suites once everything is completed, with price tags ranging from $10 million to $100 million. These suites will be located on the top floors of the building, occupying anywhere from a quarter of the floor to the entire floor, and can be used for conventions, expos, meetings or other events designated by the suite’s owner. 

These suites, which will make up around 25,000 square feet of the hotel’s footprint, are meant to break away from the traditional large event space typically used for conventions and reunions. Las Vegas has not only seen its casinos take a hit from the coronavirus, but its convention market has suffered, as well, and Doumani believes the smaller spaces will become more attractive. He told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “I think people are going to [be] very wary of large spaces. We’re not a typical leisure tourist destination at all.”

Analysts with Nomura continue to be optimistic about the recovery of Malaysia’s gambling industry. The country’s Resorts World Genting, operated by Genting Malaysia, has seen slight improvements after having been shut down for several months because of COVID-19 and, while the road to recovery is going to be long, the analysts believe that there could be positive movement throughout all of 2021. Their optimism isn’t necessarily shared by Genting Malaysia’s executives.

Malaysia’s fight against the coronavirus forced Resorts World Genting to close from March 18 to June 19. When it was allowed to reopen, the casino was forced to operate at a greatly reduced capacity, hindering its ability to generate revenue and make up for the lost three months. Genting Malaysia reported in November that it took a loss of $173.2 million in the third quarter, following a $221.2-million loss in the second quarter.

Toward the end of the year, though, more locals were visiting Resorts World Genting, which was giving it a little bit of a boost. Foreign gamblers still aren’t able to make the trek to the complex, but the end-of-year uptick was enough for Nomura analysts Tushar Mohata and Alpa Aggarwal to predict a “gradual recovery” spanning most of 2021 is possible. This reflects the analysts’ position from September of last year, when they asserted, “We expect Resorts World Genting to stage a gradual recovery over the coming quarters, with a sharp inflection come financial-year 2022, with the opening of the theme park.” That theme park is still on schedule to open later this year, providing COVID-19 doesn’t cause any more schedule changes.

Genting Malaysia’s third quarter saw EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) at Resorts World Genting that was 79% lower than a year earlier. Visitation at the venue slipped in the last quarter before rebounding during the holidays, leading Nomura’s analysts to assert, “This demonstrates local demand resilience as movement curbs were lifted in third quarter 2020 (70 percent of Malaysian revenue historically has come from locals), and the effect of cost rationalisation undertaken by the group. Casino wins in third quarter 2020 were at 74 percent of third-quarter 2019 levels with the VIP segment being more resilient. While visitation dipped after October movement curbs, it rebounded towards year-end holidays.”

For any business, and particularly for gambling sites, knowing where your marketing spend is working and where it isn’t is important. Google Analytics, which we’ve already covered separately, can help you understand this to some degree, but you can take it to the next level with Google Tag Manager.

What is Google Tag Manager?

In a nutshell, Google Tag Manager (GTG) is marketed as an easy-to-setup, easy to use way for marketing teams to track the performance of their campaigns. No longer does a dev team need to code tags into the site, once the GTG is coded into the header of your site, the marketing team can set up all of their tags from their dashboard, and use Google Analytics to track their results.

Why use Google Tag Manager?

According to legend, infamous career bank robber Willie Sutton was once asked by reporter Mitch Ohnstad why he robbed banks. Sutton replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Whether he actually said it or not, people do what they do because that’s where the money is. Corporations, or more accurately the executives in charge of them rubber-stamped by their shareholders, merge or spin off because that’s where the money is at the time. Where is the money now? It’s in free debt and equity mania. All that matters is the name. The bigger you make it, the more money flows into it. Nothing else matters.

And so we turn to a new year, and the massive mergers in the casino and gaming industry continue. Debt is free, equity is money, and there seems to be no limit to how big these companies can get. The latest merger on the docket looks to be MGM and Entain, AKA the financial engineering artist formerly known as, which is already a massive umbrella company of disparate gaming assets cobbled together with still more debt and equity.

Nevermind that the United Kingdom, one of Entain’s core markets, is shut down again until March, and who knows how long after that. Nevermind that Las Vegas, MGM’s core market, is a ghost town for who knows how long. Nevermind that Entain has suspended dividends indefinitely, and MGM has pared them down to a penny a share. None of that matters because the only thing better than a humongous company, is an even more humongous company. After this, what’s even going to be left of the UK gaming industry besides 888 and a smattering of other small players?

If anyone can make speculators just a bit wary of what’s going on here, it’s Carl Icahn. The man hasn’t maintained his position as a top dog on Wall Street for decades by being a lucky trend chaser. He’s done it by creating the trends, timing them with money flows, and then selling into them. He was able to fold Caesars into Eldorado and then immediately dump his stake in July once the deal was completed. I’d warned him not to push the deal, but that seems silly now, given that he apparently never had any intention of owning the massive company he helped create, but rather let someone else try to tame the beast. Icahn knew what he was doing the whole time, as he almost always has throughout his sensational career. And now, after his big deals are done, he’s sounding the alarm. “In my day I’ve seen a lot of wild rallies and a lot of mispriced stocks, but there is one thing they all have in common,” he told CNBC yesterday. Eventually they hit a wall…It’s always said it’s different this time, but it never turns out to be the truth.”

Philippine Offshore Gambling Operators (POGOs) have won a victory in the courts against the 5% franchise tax. The Supreme Court of the Philippines have ruled against the Bayanihan 2 act’s 5% franchise tax, meant to help the country raise additional revenues to combat Covid-19.

By a vote of 13-1, the court ordered a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the 5% tax.

JUST IN: Supreme Court magistrates vote 13-1 to grant TRO on imposition of increased taxes on Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations (POGOs) under Bayanihan to Heal As One Act II. Only Justice Marvic Leonen dissenting.- SC source | via @mikenavallo

— ABS-CBN News Channel (@ANCALERTS) January 5, 2021https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js