The AFL semi-finals will be a sudden death showdown between four Victorian sides, desperate to play Brisbane and Port Adelaide for a spot in the 2020 Grand Final. St Kilda will be forced to battle the current premiers Richmond without several key players. Fresh off a major upset, Collingwood will be riding a wave of emotion when they battle Geelong.

All four teams have been on the road for more than three months, and it looms as a battle for survival as all four sides will be desperate to play next week. Check out our betting tips on the key AFL games below.

Richmond vs St Kilda

Despite their first loss to Brisbane in 15-matches, defending premiers Richmond continue to be favourites for the 2020 title. The Tigers were uncharacteristically poor against the Lions and won’t make the mistake of underestimating the Saints. Richmond will most likely gamble with the forward of Tom Lynch in the must-win clash this week; the Tigers forward missed the loss against the Lions through injury.

The National Rugby League (NRL) heads towards the business end of the season. Two-time defending champions Sydney Roosters are set to play the Raiders in a replay of the 2019 Grand Final. The 2014 champions South Sydney will be hoping to advance deeper into the playoffs with a match-up against the Eels.

Below are our tips on who is likely to progress beyond the second week of the NRL finals, in two sudden death encounters. 

Roosters vs Raiders

The two-time defending premiers have struggled to perform at their usual high standards of consistency over the last two weeks. The Roosters lost a heartbreaker against the Panthers on the weekend 29-28, after being hammered 60-6 the week prior by the Rabbitohs. The defending champions last dropped two consecutive games in the opening two rounds of the season and another slip this week will be fatal.

It might not surprise you, but Cryptocurrency sportsbettors are the riskiest in the business when it comes to Esports investment.

According to a new study from LOOT.BET, the esports betting specialists, Cryptocurrency owners have been revealed to be the riskiest investors, having kept up a strong level of betting during the pandemic period.

While many financial markets have taken a bit hit, Cryptocurrency’s resilience has led to many speculating on the long-term benefits of the currency against more traditionally tradeable forms. One key indicator of this has historically, in the short-term, at least, sportsbetting.

For the last three years, Bitcoin and Ethereum have been hugely popular currencies, with cryptocurrencies in general contributing 15% of LOOT.BET’s turnover.

The sports betting partnership between PointsBet and the University of Colorado offers some groundbreaking if highly suspect financial incentives for the Buffs.

Last month, PointsBet signed the first ‘corporate partnership’ between a sportsbook and a National Collegiate Athletic Association Division-I school. The deal marked a major turnabout for the NCAA, which for decades fought hard against the legalization of sports betting. The deal is technically with Buffalo Sports Properties LLC, which is part of the Learfield IMG College sports marketing operation.

As with all recent deals signed between sportsbooks and major North American sports teams and leagues, the financial terms of the PointsBet-CU Buffs pact weren’t disclosed. But Sports Illustrated obtained a copy of the contract, which contains some eyebrow-raising financial incentives for the school.

The five-year deal will see CU earn a minimum of $1.625m, plus $30 for each bettor who opens an account with PointsBet using a promo code specific to the school. The idea that an NCAA school will act as a sports betting affiliate marketer – albeit one that’s not earning much from its referrals – may ruffle feathers among more traditional sports fans and/or those who continue to view legal wagering with a skeptical eye.

China has warned its citizens not to be lured into working for cross-border gambling operators based in Myanmar, while also warning against gambling during the annual Golden Week holiday period.

This weekend, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it had received reports of “many criminal cases” in which citizens accepted offers to work for allegedly legit companies in the northern region of Myanmar, only to find themselves “forced to engage in illegal and criminal activities such as telecom fraud and gambling.”

The warning claimed that Chinese citizens who accepted these job offers and traveled to Myanmar later found themselves subject to acts of violence, illegal detention and extortion of relatives back home to secure their freedom, while others have been “forced into prostitution.”

While Myanmar has yet to formally authorize any legal casinos, dozens of gambling operations have long flourished in areas such as Laukkai, which features a large ethnic Chinese population. In 2017, three of these venues were overrun by a group of heavily armed gunmen who reportedly made off with over US$73m in cash while killing several local residents and wounding around 100 others.

Spain continues to boast seriously low problem gambling rates, calling into question the government’s strict new rules on online gambling marketing.

Thursday saw the release of Gambling & Society 2020, the annual market study by CEJUEGO, which represents Spain’s private gambling operators, with the able assistance of the University Carlos III of Madrid. The report says 30m Spaniards, roughly 85% of the population aged 18-75, engaged in some form of gambling last year, a figure that has remained relatively constant since 2015.

Lottery products offered by the state-run SELAE and ONCE, are the most popular form of gambling, with the annual Christmas draw lottery enjoying 74.5% participation. Around 3.5m Spaniards enjoyed ONCE’s scratch cards, up from 3m in the 2019 report, and this product also has the largest share of players under 35 years (50.5).

Some 6.5% of Spaniards (2.2m people) visited a local casino last year, down from 7.2% in 2018 and the lowest rate since 2016. Bingo halls also saw fewer visitors, falling two points from 2018 to 6.9% (2.4m). Gaming halls fared slightly better, dipping only 0.1 points to 8.1% (3m).

Australian casino operator Crown Resorts’ senior management continues to demonstrate that they were either shockingly unaware of their VIP gambling compliance responsibilities or simply didn’t care.

The New South Wales Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority (ILGA) inquiry into Crown’s suitability to hold a state gaming license unearthed still more embarrassing revelations this week. On Thursday, it was Crown’s former CEO/chair and current director John Alexander’s turn to squirm under the spotlight.

Pressed on whether he’d seen 2015 media articles detailing China’s crackdown on international casinos attempting to lure mainland gamblers, Alexander said he couldn’t recall seeing them. Told that other Crown execs, including one board member, were aware of the dangers that ultimately led to China arresting 19 Crown staff, Alexander claimed this represented “a failure of information flow upwards.”

China allows international resort operators to promote non-gaming amenities to mainland residents but any talk of gambling is strictly off limits. Yet Crown continued to aggressively market its gaming operations to mainland high-rollers, “deliberately spitting” on Chinese authorities (in the words of a former joint venture partner).

Has the coronavirus created the push necessary to create totally cashless casinos? That was the topic of the second panel in CoinGeek Live’s gambling track, as Moderator Jimmy Nguyen, Founding President, Bitcoin Association, lead a discussion on ‘Cashless Casinos: How Bitcoin Technology Can Create a Better & Safer Gaming Experience,’ He was joined by Matthew Dickson, Co-Founder & CEO of BitBoss, Ed Andrewes, CEO of Resorts Digital Gaming, and Stephen Crystal, CEO of SCCG Management.

The innovations BitBoss is creating for gambling, using Bitcoin SV to put operations entirely on chain, and creating easy BSV payment solutions for brick and mortar casinos, drove much of the conversation. Covid-19 had made some of those solutions much more interesting as casinos avoid more physical touch points, but as Dickson explained, he thinks online gambling is driving change even faster:

“Removing cash and anything that is a touchpoint is a major concern to people. I think Covid is a driver of this. At the end of the day, I think this convergence of this. At the end of the day, I do think that this convergence of land based and online is also another major factor that’s going to drive adoption, maybe even in a more significant way than Covid.”

Amdrewes sees lots of benefits in blockchain technology, but he’s not convinced casino regulators will allow any change in the short term. “There’s so many benefits in terms of the transparency,” he said. “I’m a big proponent but sort of further down the line.”

Starting off the gambling track of CoinGeek Live was a panel on ‘Esports & Advantages of a Massively Scalable Blockchain’. Moderator Jimmy Nguyen, Founding President of the Bitcoin Association, was joined by John Brackens – CTO of the Esports Entertainment Group (EEG), Adam Kling – CEO of Kronoverse and Rahul Sood Co-Founder & CEO of Unikrn.

Sood noted that it may soon be too late to get into the esports craze, so the time to join is now. Operators are hitting up Unikrn for esports product, as Covid-19 has forced a realization that “It’s time to innovate or die,” he said.

EEG, which helps promote esports betting, has an eye to what the industry needs, and Brackens noted that a blockchain like Bitcoin SV, with microtransactions and an audit trail, is a perfect solution. He said:

“Blockchain really helps towards that whole transparency aspect of it. Blockchain holds people accountable for their actions. Having a mechanism in place that is tamper proof and transparent not only helps detour scammers that might seek to exploit or take advantage of operators, but it also provides a clear audit trail for anyone that might want to review the entire history of a match, the gameplay or the transaction history.”

The future of Pocket Games software is in limbo after the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) suspended their license. The software provider was found to be in breach of compliance regulations, with the MGA deciding to come down hard for the violations.

Pocket Games Software have been established since 2015, with the operator growing rapidly to a staff of over 200 employees in a little over 12 months. They started with slot offerings and quickly expanded their range of games and titles, achieving recognition from the industry at the 2017 ICE Totally Gaming Conference, in London.

The MGA found that Pocket Games software can no longer continue gaming operations, register new players, accept deposits and provide refunds to all registered players.

 The MGA released a statement of their findings:

After a full day of looking at the transactional capabilities of Bitcoin, the second day of CoinGeek Live took a long hard look at all of the data ledger capabilities the Bitcoin SV (BSV) blockchain is capable of. The first half of the day looked at how BSV is helping businesses create better ways of transmitting and recording data, while the second half looked at regulations with Congressman Darren Soto, as well as tokenization and BSV’s use in transaction processing.

Big Data is better on Bitcoin

After a quick welcome from Bitcoin Association Founding President Jimmy Nguyen, the day began with a look at how BSV is already enabling the Internet of Things (IoT), and delivering the best Dig Data service available. Paul Chiari, Founder of Weather SV and MetaStreme, broke down how his companies are already helping businesses record and use important data at minimal cost, thanks to Bitcoin SV’s massive scaling and micro transactions. “MetaStreme is now actively working to bring real world solutions on to the platform, and some of our initial project partnerships are underway.”

For those interested in more direct internet applications of Bitcoin SV, Jeff Chen, Founder and CEO of Maxthon Ltd, creator of the Maxthon Internet browser. Maxthon has decided to shift towards being a Bitcoin SV based browser, with NBdomain supplanting traditional domains and providing Know Your Customer (KYC) benefits. “Each NBdomain is associated with a public key. The public key can be used to identify the owner without disclosing the privacy information.”

The Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) has cancelled the license of Playbay Malta Limited, which operates HDbets.com. The Malta regulators found the operator guilty of ‘systemic deficiencies’ in its compliance with AML/CFT obligations. As part of the ruling, the operator, Playbay Malta will now be barred from performing gaming operations, registering new players or accepting new customers.

The MGA further ordered that registered players with Playbay Malta will be able to access their accounts and all the funds for registered players will be refunded in compliance with the current regulations.

The MGA released a statement of findings that included:

The Authorised Person’s voluntary suspension of the licence has expired on 6 September 2020, and no plan has been provided by the licensee of when and how it intends to reactivate such authorisation;

Singapore recently embarked on a mission to get its tourism industry – and its revenue – back on track. It began by offering “flights to nowhere,” an aerial journey in a Singapore Airlines plane that would essentially do nothing more than circle for a while in the air before returning to its starting point. That program didn’t last long after environmentalists raised concerns, so a few aircraft are now going to become temporary, on-ground restaurants – a program that has seen modest success elsewhere. Singapore isn’t giving up on trying to capture large amounts of tourism dollars, and is now undertaking a new, but similar flight-to-nowhere initiative. This one is water-based, though, and could see Genting Cruise Lines offering “cruises to nowhere.”

As international cruises are still in drydock because of the COVID-19, the ships are tied up with nothing to do. The Singapore Tourism Board has now issued a new tender to DNV GL Singapore, a division of global maritime industry advisor DNV GL Global, which will give it the ability to develop a cruise compliance and certification program for cruise lines that will allow some ships to splash back down into the water. Through the program, DNV GL Singapore will be able to approve certain cruise ships to offer cruises to nowhere, setting sail and docking at the same location. 

Before a certificate of approval can be awarded, the cruise line operator will have to submit its ship for inspection and an audit. They will have to adhere to a rigorous and strict set of guidelines for crew and passenger safety, and will only be allowed to travel at 50% their normal capacities for the first three months. After that, the limit could be increased if it looks as though COVID-19 is under control. 

So far, Genting Cruise Lines has been included in the list of potential candidates for the program. Its Dream Cruises division has been given preliminary approval to offer the trips, which will last from two to four nights, with the final approval by DNV GL Singapore expected at any time. It isn’t clear how many trips Dream Cruises might offer once the program gets going. 

CoinGeek Live Day 3 has begun! If you haven’t signed up already, you can register for free to watch the whole conference at CoinGeekConference.com.

The agenda for Day 3 begins at 9:00 am EDT (Noon BST) on October 2, but you can login now to check out exhibitor booths and begin networking with others in the Bitcoin world. You can login here.

Day 3 will feature the CG Live gambling track, with talks on esports, cashless casinos and the future of online gambling. Our lead reporter, Becky Liggero Fontana, has already given you lots of reasons why this is a day of talks that, if you’re in the gambling industry, you won’t want to miss. You can check out the conference agenda to see what CoinGeek Live has in store, and some of our most anticipated panels

You can watch our coverage of everything that happened in Day 1 and Day 2. And of course, register now so you don’t miss another minute.