On October 5, a panel moderated by Bitcoin Association Founding President Jimmy Nguyen considered how close we may be to a cashless casino experience thanks to Bitcoin SV and BitBoss, and how blockchain based gambling is pushing change across the gambling industry, at CoinGeek Live.

Bitcoin SV can not only improve the online experience as a faster and cheaper payment option, but the massively scaling block sizes of BSV allow for operators to save on costs by using the blockchain as their immutable data ledger, thanks in large part to advances made by BitBoss. With the world focused on a global pandemic and removing touchpoints as much as possible, is the time to adopt Bitcoin now?

In case you missed it, watch the whole presentation below, or read our recap of the panel here:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a8hi3dbNF4?feature=oembed&w=640&h=360]

Super Rugby is set to kick off with a reworked South edition, as the Sharks and the Lions have the honours of the first match of the South African tournament. The Cheetahs take on the Pumas in the second match. The third game of the opening round has the Bulls going up against the newly formed Griquas side.

The small series will serve as a potential selection trial for the current Rugby World Cup holders. The Springboks are scheduled to come to Australia for the revised Rugby Championship. See our full betting preview and match tips below.

Sharks vs Lions

The Lions have struggled in recent times with domestic encounters against the Sharks; losing their last seven matches. If 2019 form is anything to go by, the Sharks have won their last four Super Rugby games, which is their longest streak since their 2016 campaign. The Lions Elton Jantjies will be one to watch; he has a try assist in four of his last five games against the Sharks but interestingly hasn’t managed to get across the try line.

Online gaming content provider Pragmatic Play has been busy working its magic to expand across Latin America (LatAm), which is seen as one of the hottest growing gaming markets around. It has entered a number of partnerships already this year that will allow it to expand its virtual footprint, and has now added another name to the list. Pragmatic Play announced a few days ago that it will now be a provider of online slot machines to Zamba, an iGaming operator in Colombia.

Now, Zamba users can enjoy top-ranking slot titles from Pragmatic, such as the John Hunter series, Wolf Gold and Wild Walker. The iGaming platform also gains access to Enhance, Pragmatic’s gamification toolkit that allows operators to build tournaments, card bonuses, prize multipliers and more. The inclusion of the slot options and Enhance will allow Zamba to build its portfolio in Colombia and attract new users to its services. 

Santiago Melo, Zamba’s business unit manager, asserts, “Growing our offering is vital to keep growing our customer base and Pragmatic Play has incredible diversity in its slot portfolio. With many top-performing slots appealing to a wide range of player demographics, their products will take our portfolio of titles to the next level, and we look forward to a long and exciting partnership together.” 

Pragmatic is constantly hard at work introducing new titles. It currently releases about four new virtual slot titles each month, and is also putting together live casino and bingo options to provide additional content to iGaming operators. Live casino gaming has become one of the hottest innovations for iGaming in recent times, giving online gaming aficionados the ability to receive a truer physical casino experience while playing online. 

In the fast-moving world of gambling, sometimes you might miss news that could be important to you. To make sure you’re all caught up on gaming industry news, be it online or brick and mortar, we’re rounding up the some of the announcements and partnerships from the last week that you might have missed.

Don’t miss out on all of the latest announcements. Our Press Release section is updated constantly.

Cricket or Rummy: It’s time to Win and Enjoy: Rummyculture unfolds its Mega Indian Rummy League around the same time as IPL

Cash Prizes worth Rs. 6 crore to be awarded to the winners of the tournament

It’s been almost a year since Japanese lawmaker Tsukasa Akimoto was outed for having accepted bribes to help a Chinese gaming operator get in on Japan’s upcoming integrated resort (IR) industry. Akimoto has been brought up on a number of charges related to the scheme that has put a black eye on Japan’s attempts to launch a legal and regulated casino market, and the company who reportedly paid him off, 500.com, has seen several key figures walk away to try to protect themselves. However, 500.com decided to try to set the record straight and conducted its own investigation into the accusations to determine whether or not they were legitimate. The results of that investigation are not shocking. 

500.com lost its chairman and CEO over the scandal, and its own auditors quit after revealing that internal company controls led to “material weaknesses” for several years that resulted in 500.com publishing false financial statements. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the company, which has primarily targeted the sports lottery segment, found no violations of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 after hiring the King & Wood Mallesons law firm to investigate the bribery allegations. After turning over its findings to 500.com, the company’s board said that it had “concluded that it did not find a sufficient basis to establish a violation of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 in connection with the Company’s prior activities in Japan.”

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits government officials from receiving any type of payment from certain individuals, especially where there is a conflict of interest. In the case of 500.com and Akimoto, investigations have already shown that the lawmaker, who was responsible for helping develop Japan’s IR framework, had received funds that could be traced to 500.com. It’s hard to argue against the transparent and obvious conflict of interest. 

Given the fact that the upper echelon of 500.com was said to have been involved in the bribery scandal, it isn’t surprising that the board would return a “not guilty” result from its own internal investigation. The day a company admits wrongdoing when it’s found with its hand in the cookie jar is the day Ferris Bueller becomes president. Even if the bribes were limited to only the chairman and CEO of 500.com, any internal evidence could have been easily destroyed or made to disappear before the law firm, one of the best in Asia, got to it. 

The U.S. 2020 elections are just 26 days away, and every day brings some kind of major news that can continue to sway the presidential contenders’ odds. President Donald Trump, who was expected to see some kind of sympathy for his Covid-19 diagnosis, continues to see his odds worsen.

Immediately after we found out Trump had tested positive for Covid-19, Bodog informed us they expected to see a bounce back for the president, both because sports bettors would be sympathetic to his plight, and because the first presidential debate caused his polls to bottom out, bringing his odds to record lows.

That hasn’t happened. While he hasn’t gotten sick enough to make most bettors think he’ll leave office early, with PredicIt pricing his chances of dropping out at $0.06 at the time of publication, his odds of winning have continued to decrease. Trump currently sits at $0.37 for re-election at PredictIt, a $0.03 slide from his $0.40 position on October 5.

Bodog is now setting his odds to win at +150, with Joe Biden sitting at-180. That’s a 15-point swing from where the two candidates were a week ago, going against Bodog’s predictions.

Cambodia’s National Assembly just approved, among others, new laws for the gaming industry this week, looking to provide better consumer protection and bring the country more in line with policies established by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Everything from casino investments in money-laundering controls will be put into place once the laws are approved by Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihamoni, and the overwhelming support for the measures, 114 of a possible 117 votes, seems to indicate there won’t be any difficulty getting the final signature. However, according to one U.S. political expert, the new laws most likely won’t have the desired impact and he likens them to essentially nothing more than putting “lipstick on a pig.”

The new gaming legislation, which spans 12 chapters and includes 97 different articles, were drafted to enhance Cambodian tourism, which will lead to the creation of new jobs and spur the economy. It addresses new casino investments, improved monitoring of the gaming market, the creation of gambling zones and anti-money-laundering and terrorism financing measures. However, California Occidental College professor of diplomacy and world affairs Sophal Ear thinks the measures could miss their target. He told Casino.org, “On the surface, it sounds great, it’s all very much needed, and I’m sure it has a lot to do with Cambodia being on the grey list of the [FATF] on money laundering.”

Ear explains that Cambodia’s casino industry grew too large before the implementation of gaming laws, adding that it wasn’t until after 193 licensed casinos were active in the country before the new legislation was created. However, a similar, although slightly different, scenario had played out in Nevada before the gambling capital of the U.S. developed its own casino laws and oversight. This isn’t too different than what has been seen in many industries, where the activity gets off the ground before ultimately being regulated.

In Nevada, gaming has been around since the mid-1800s, and attempts to regulate the space consistently failed. Legislature to ban games of chance was introduced in 1861, but was essentially ignored entirely. It wasn’t until 1931 that gambling finally saw organized legislative oversight, and it would take another 20 years for the Nevada Gaming Control Board to be created. 

On October 5, a panel moderated by Nick Hill, Director of Premier Consulting, took a long hard look at the current status of blockchain technology in the iGaming space at CoinGeek Live.

Bitcoin SV can not only improve the online experience as a faster and cheaper payment option, but the massively scaling block sizes of BSV allow for operators to save on costs by using the blockchain as their immutable data ledger. But what will it take to get regulators on board?

In case you missed it, watch the whole presentation below, or read our recap of the panel here:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCMXo62h5n4?feature=oembed&w=640&h=360]

GVC Holdings happily announced a strong Q3 on October 8, revealing their group net gaming revenue (NGR) had increased by 12%, spurred by online growth. The company cheered on a strong return to retail, and growth largely spurred by online play, while also announcing the acquisition of Bet.P

Online NGR lead the way for the quarter, with 26% growth for the quarter. The return of traditional sports betting aided that in some degree, with 24% growth coming in that area, and 27% from other gaming. On the year, the company has seen 21% growth overall from the online space.

The promising indicator had to be a return to retail. For the quarter, retail in the U.K. is now only 5% down in NGR, while the rest of European outlets saw growth for the quarter, rising 2%. The respective regions are still down on the year, 36% and 31% respectively, thanks to closures caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Shay Segev, GVC’s CEO who recently demonstrated his faith in the company by investing heavily in the company, commented:

Switzerland’s online gambling blacklist continues to grow, including one site that appears to be piggybacking on the name of a locally licensed online casino.

On Tuesday, Switzerland’s federal gaming board (ESBK) issued the latest update of the nation’s blacklist of unauthorized international online gambling domains catering to local punters without local permission. There are 35 new additions, bringing the cumulative total to a healthy 285 uninvited and very much unwelcome domains.

As usual, most of the fresh faces are bog-standard Curacao-licensed online casinos, including several number-prefixed mirrors of the same operators, some of which had previously been honored with a spot on ESBK’s naughty list.

There is at least one slightly more recognizable domain, namely cryptocurrency-based sportsbook Sportsbet.io, which has official betting partnerships with several UK football clubs and whose logo can be found on the jerseys of Southampton FC and Watford FC.

Ohio’s land-based gaming operators set a new revenue record for the month of September, although the numbers are trending downward since the initial post-pandemic lockdown surge.   

Figures released by the Ohio Casino Control Commission (which oversees the state’s four brick-and-mortar casinos) and the Ohio Lottery Commission (which oversees video lottery terminals at seven racetrack ‘racinos’) show combined gaming revenue of $164.5m in September, up 6.1% from the same month last year.

The four casinos generated revenue of just under $71.9m in September, up around 5% year-on-year although down from the supercharged numbers in July ($86m) and August ($77.4m), which were the first months in which Ohio gamblers were able to visit casinos following two months of pandemic shutdown.

It was a similar story over at the racinos, where VLT revenue came in just under $92.8m, up nearly 7% year-on-year but falling short of July ($95m) and August ($94.8m). MGM Northfield Park led not only all racinos but all operators in September with $19.9m, with casinos Hollywood Columbus ($19.3m) and Hollywood Toledo ($18.9m) not far behind.

It’s taken a long time to get here, but it would look like Daniel Negreanu and Doug Polk have finally put a red ring around a specific date upon which to start their heads-up grudge match. 

After two months of waiting for Daniel Negreanu to finish playing a pretty full-on WSOP schedule on GGPoker, Polk got in touch, in public, on Twitter.

Alright im sick of the run around. Does anyone know how to get in touch with @RealKidPoker so we can actually schedule this match.

He tweets at me once in awhile and then goes silent. Its been 2 months and im ready to fucking battle. Lets work out some details.

Casino operator Twin River Worldwide Holdings (TRWH) is looking to raise more cash, possibly for additional acquisitions, while offering a hopeful preview of its third-quarter performance.

On Tuesday, TRWH announced plans to raise around $125m via a new debt offering of 6.75% senior unsecured notes due 2027. Combined with the $400m of similar debt raised this spring, TRWH is now on the hook for $525m in notes due seven years hence. The offer is expected to close on Friday (9).

TRWH says it plans to use the extra cash for general corporate purposes “which could include … acquisitions and other transactions.” It was only last week that TRWH announced a $120m deal for Delaware North’s Jumer’s Casino & Hotel in Rock Island, Illinois, the latest in a string of regional acquisitions over the past few years.   

TRWH also offered a snapshot of its upcoming Q3 financial report, which the company believes will show revenue coming in between $100m and $130m, while adjusted earnings will be in a range of $30m to $40m. TRWH said it expects to be cash flow positive for the quarter (excluding its July 2019 acquisition of Casino KC and Casino Vicksburg from Eldorado Resorts).

Online gambling operator GVC Holdings has pledged to tighten its marketing controls after its Foxy Games brand was spanked by the UK advertising watchdog.

On Wednesday, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a consumer complaint filed against a Foxy Games paid-for Google search ad. The ad, which was spotted on July 11, stated “Earn Money Online – Foxy Games – Play Online,” leading the complainant to feel the ad was suggesting Foxy’s online casino as the path toward achieving financial security.

Knowing a dead parrot when they saw one, GVC subsidiary ElectraWorks didn’t even try to defend the content of the ad, while citing ‘human error’ as the reason the ad emerged from behind the door marked ‘cynical opportunism’ into the light of day.

Foxy’s timing couldn’t have been worse, given the heightened scrutiny on online operator marketing during the fiscal insecurity many Britons are experiencing during the pandemic lockdown. In August, a social media post for GVC’s Coral brand was deemed irresponsible for encouraging punters to ‘have another go’ if their bet proved a loser. 

US tribal casino operator Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment (MGE) took another step forward on its ambitious Greek integrated resort plans after submitting a financial bid for the project’s gaming license.

On Wednesday, the Hellenic Gaming Commission (HGC) announced that the consortium of MGE and Greek construction giant GEK Terna had submitted a €150m bid for the sole casino license at the €8b Hellinikon resort project on the site of Athens’ old international airport.

The consortium’s offer was five times the minimum €30m the HGC had set for this process, which was always something of a curiosity, given that the HGC disqualified the only other bidder (Hard Rock International) way back in January over what HRI claims was a paperwork technicality (a decision the company continues to protest without success).

Regardless, the unveiling of MGE’s suitably high offer paves the way for HGC to formally negotiate the specific terms of the 30-year gaming license. The deal will then require the approval of the Court of Auditors and ratification by parliament, hopefully by the end of this year. Then and only then will this interminably convoluted process finally conclude and shovels may actually touch dirt.