Monthly Archives: March 2015

NBA owners support Silver’s gambling stance; Proposed Vegas NHL team would be an expansion franchise

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has been front and center in advocating a legalized sports betting infrastructure and his stance has won him many admirers, including his bosses.

NBA owners are coming out in force, throwing their support behind Silver as he continues to champion for legalizing sports gambling in the US.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said he has always been an advocate of such a move. “We’ve always been hypocritical saying we didn’t realize it was a big part of interest in the game,” Cuban said, as quoted by a Newsday report. “When you do any work on where people are actually gambling, it’s all overseas and places we can’t see, and the league has got to monitor all these third-party betting sites and that makes it a lot tougher.

“By bringing it where we can see it, you reduce a lot of the risk that something bad can happen,” Cuban added.

Los Angeles Lakers president Jeanie Buss isn’t as quote-friendly as Cuban or some other owners. She rarely talks but when she does, her words carry a lot of weight. Buss declared that “as a league, we’re behind our commissioner in the process of supporting legalization on a federal level.”

“If our fans are already doing it, then it should be something that’s brought out into the mainstream and it should be regulated,” Buss added.

The question now is whether commissioners from the other four professional sports leagues in the US share Silver’s determination to push for a legalized sports betting infrastructure. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has said all the right things, but has yet to have any MLB owners vouch for his position. MLS Commissioner Don Garber has been quiet, as has the NHL’s Gary Bettman. As far as the NFL is concerned, well, as long as Roger Goodell is commissioner, don’t hold your breath on seeing him join Silver’s crusade.

Wynn Resorts (WYNN) Downgraded From Buy to Hold

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Becky’s Affiliated: Jim Ryan on Pala Interactive and the state of US regulated real money gaming

Jim Ryan is a familiar face in the iGaming industry and also an influencer, having worked in the marketplace since 2001 in C-level positions. Ryan is currently serving as the CEO of Pala Interactive, a gaming technology provider with a focus on US regulated real money iGaming.  Pala Interactive is the first tribal entity to receive a real money iGaming licence in the state of New Jersey and the company has big plans for California’s market once it opens up.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Ryan, one of my favorite executives in the iGaming space, to chat about Pala Interactive’s performance in New Jersey, his view on bad actor and tainted asset issues, how PokerStars’ imminent New Jersey license will impact his business, the state of regulation in California and the his opinion on the threat of Sheldon Adelson and RAWA.

Becky Liggero: Lets start with New Jersey.  A lot of people are disappointed in the performance of the New Jersey market so far- from your perspective, how are things going with Pala Interactive since you’ve entered the market in New Jersey?

Jim Ryan: From our perspective its been all good.  But we approached New Jersey, I think, with a very different viewpoint than others.  If you take a look at the facts, we entered the market a year late.  We entered the market without a known brand in the state of New Jersey, we’ve also entered that market without a database.  In one respect, one could look at this as us being disadvantaged.   In another respect, we actually see this as a great opportunity for us.

We went into New Jersey with three very specific objectives:

First, being a new enterprise, we wanted to expose ourselves to a regulatory process.  So having the company, its management team and its product go through that process, being vetted, positioning us not only for New Jersey but for other regulated US markets as they open up, fit perfectly with our strategy, which by the way, is to operate in US regulated, real money gaming environments.

The second reason why we thought New Jersey was well placed for us was that we had built a brand new technology platform, probably the only platform out there that was built specifically to operate in the US regulated market. Actually we built much of the platform with the New Jersey regulations in hand.  But its one thing to run that platform in a lab and it’s a whole other thing to expose it to the marketplace.  And we’ve done that for the last three months and learned an awful lot of things about the good, the bad and the ugly with our platform and we’re actually this week about to do our first major release which is going to optimize the product significantly, from the player journey perspective, from a conversion perspective.  We’re adding 28 new games to the platform this week which will take us well above 120 games, I think one of the largest in the marketplace.

Milpitas store owner sues customer for half of $1 million lottery prize

Assembly line worker Evangelina Reyes had big plans for the $1 million she won earlier this year in the California Lottery’s “Emerald 10” scratch-off game. But then the owner of the Milpitas liquor store where she bought the winning ticket slapped her with a lawsuit, claiming she’d signed a handwritten contract guaranteeing him half the prize.

SEO Tip of the Week: Onsite Trust Optimisation – New content with real content date markers

90 Digital CEO Nick Garner talks about another part of Trust Optimisation, and the most important is that you have a Fresh New Content on the site and have a Real Date Markers in this edition of CalvinAyre.com’s SEO Tip of the Week.

Short intro to Trust Optimization.

Along with on site optimization and link acquisition, there seems to be a third element to ranking well on Google, it’s called Trust Optimization. Trust Optimization is based on the information we have got from anecdotal evidence on click through rates and rankings along with explicit guidelines from Google stating what they are looking for in a trusted website.

On with the post…

Following on from making sure your site is properly maintained, it makes sense that users will trust you more if they see a steady flow of new content on your website. Course there are some sites which will forever be static, but on the whole most sites should have fresh content to show that it is well maintained and keeping up with the times.

Since google has to rely on what it says on the page, date markers are really important.

This is a date marker:

Student Labor Action Project continues to push PILOTs discussion

PILOTs has become something of a buzz word at Penn following the protest at Penn President Amy Gutmann’s annual holiday party last December. The Student Labor Action Project About 30 people attended the Houston Hall event hosted by SLAP along with Penn Education Society, Penn National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Penn Democrats PILOTs are contributions that nonprofit organizations can voluntarily make to local governments to cover costs of essential services like fire protection and road construction.

Bet365 braces for start of Australian trial; younger Aussies giving up the gamble

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) lawsuit against online gambling operator Bet365 is set to begin this month.

Last August, the ACCC accused Bet365’s Aussie operations of making “misleading representations” in their bonus offers to punters. Specifically, the ACCC cited a free bet and deposit bonus of $200 that came with rollover requirements.

The ACCC says these requirements weren’t made sufficiently clear and thus the promotion violated consumer law. The ACCC is asking the Federal Court of Australia to award it declarations, injunctions, pecuniary penalties, corrective advertising, a compliance program and costs. (Partridge in a pear tree to be delivered next Christmas.)

The Australian Broadcasting Company quoted Bet365 senior counsel Cameron Moore saying the company wanted to nail down the specific nature of the allegations before trial commenced. The ACCC has previously acknowledged that the Northern Territory-licensed Bet365 amended its promotions after being contacted by the ACCC.

YOUNGER AUSSIES GIVING UP THE GAMBLE

Studies of the global gaming market usually place Australia at the top in per capita spending on gambling but new data suggests younger generations are choosing a different path than their elders.

Roy Morgan Research decided to study the gambling habits of Generation Z, which is defined as Aussies born between 1991 and 2005 (although the study only concerned itself with the 18+ members). The average Australian spent $13 per week on gambling, 9% of his or her weekly entertainment budget. But Generation Z spent just $4 on gambling, representing 3% of their budget.

The WSOP Breaking Records in Maryland

A World Series of Poker Circuit event at the Horseshoe Baltimore has smashed the record for a live tournament, in Maryland, after Jesse Mills defeated 2,403 entrants on his way to victory.

[Image Credit: PokerNews]

If you listen hard enough, your customers will tell you what they want.

The World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) is proving to be a very efficient conduit in that regard. It’s been a record-breaking year for the series, and it keeps getting better.

The Season 11 stop at the Horseshoe Baltimore in Maryland has smashed  the record for a land-based live poker tournament, in the state, and they have only played through two of the 12 gold ring events that are going to be on show.

2,403 players ponied up the $365 buy-in, and in some cases even more, in Event #2 $365 No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE) Re-Entry. The players eagerness to fire off consecutive bullets created a total prize pool of $720,900 and $106,305 of that now rests in the piggy bank of Jesse Mills.

Talking to the WSOP, after the event, Mills said that his key to success was avoiding tougher players, and folding big hands when he wasn’t sure how to proceed.

Sweden yanks gambling apps; Finland won’t prosecute online gamblers

Sweden’s gaming regulator has succeeded in convincing Apple to remove several online gambling apps from the Swedish-facing App Store.

Apps linked to 888, Betfair, Bet365, Betsson, PokerStars, William Hill, Unibet and others were unceremoniously yanked from view late last month following a complaint filed by the Lotteriinspektionen (Swedish Gaming Board).

A Lotteriinspektionen spokesperson told eGaming Review the complaint wasn’t actually a complaint, but merely an “informative letter” that sought to “verify the terms and conditions” of Apple’s gambling policy. You know, like how Anna Sage didn’t really rat out John Dillinger, she just thought FBI agent Melvin Purvis would like the movie playing at the Biograph Theater that night.

Some of the affected operators are reportedly discussing the matter with Apple in the hope of persuading the tech giant that Sweden’s suspect gaming laws don’t justify the apps’ removal. Apple recently reinstated a number of gambling apps that had been pulled from the UK App Store following what was dubbed an “admin error.”

Sweden’s offending apps vanished just weeks after the government announced that the long awaited revamp of its online betting regime had been postponed until some unspecified future date. The European Union’s top court has ordered Sweden to justify the online betting monopoly of state-owned operator Svenska Spel but Sweden appears to be thinking the problem will go away if it just thinks happy thoughts and pours another shot of Absolut Denial.

FINLAND WON’T PROSECUTE PLAYERS WHO VISIT INTERNATIONAL SITES

Similar concerns of online gambling firms poaching from local monopolies are being voiced across the border in Finland. Finland’s four authorized operators – RAY (slots), Veikkaus (lotteries), Fintoto (horseracing) and PAF’s monopoly in the autonomous Aland islands – generate annual revenue of €1.7b. That dwarfs the estimated €130m spent with international online firms, but concerns are that this gap is shrinking.

Josh Turner Triumphs at WSOPC St Louis

Josh Turner has defeated Javier Zarco, in heads-up action, to take the first prize of $136,945 in a bumper field at the World Series of Poker Circuit $1,675 Main Event at the Lumiere Place Casino and Hotel in St Louis.

Josh Turner has gone wire-to-wire in the $1,675 World Series of Poker Circuit Main Event at Lumiere Place Casino and Hotel in St Louis, Missouri.

[Image Credit: Bluff.com]

He dominated the first day of action, finishing with 400,500 chips – almost half as many as the player in second place. When he finished Day 2 he was the man heading to the final table as the chip leader, and he finished the last day with every single chip in the competition.

It’s been an outstanding year for the local lad from St. Louis. This victory was his 11th cash of the season, his seventh final table, and his second gold ring. However, despite all the accolades, this marked his first deep run in a WSOPC Main Event, and the $136,945 is the largest score of his career.

415 entrants created a total prize pool of $622,500. It was a fairly inexperienced final table with only Jesse Watson having any significant form of note, after winning a ring earlier in the season when he beat 187 players in a six-handed No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE) event for $15,428.

It’s not often that you see a Spaniard involved in the WSOPC, but Javier Zarco was a serious contender in this one. According to WSOP reports he pushed Turner all the way, and could easily have walked away from St. Louis wearing the gold ring.

Kristy Arnett: Zen and the Art of Surviving a Tough First Year in Professional Poker

Kristy Arnett: Zen and the Art of Surviving a Tough First Year in Professional Poker Video

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