Monthly Archives: March 2015

Webis to shut Betinternet fixed-odds division, focus on WatchandWager

AIM-listed online gambling operator Webis Holdings has announced it will shut its Betinternet fixed-odds sports betting product effective 10am GMT on Thursday (5).

On Tuesday, Webis announced it had decided to shutter Betinternet after regulatory changes in certain Asian markets made business untenable. Webis said it had attempted to flog Betinternet to rival firms but received no firm offers, sealing Betinternet’s fate.

Last summer, Webis had reported that Betinternet was struggling with “external challenges,” including action by the government in Singapore that forced Webis to “curtail” Betinternet’s operations in the city-state. That door was permanently shut after Singapore’s new Remote Gambling Act took effect on Feb. 2.

Betinternet had been an internet fixture for 15 years but the “ongoing development of jurisdictional protectionism for fixed-odds operations by either prohibition or onerous regulatory and levy requirements means that Betinternet.com has little chance of maintaining further profitability as operational expenses increase.”

Betinternet customers have been told to withdraw their balances within 90 days of the closure date after which the balances will be “set to zero.” However, unresolved sports bets will be settled as the results come in, and players will have 90 days from the date of those results to withdraw their winnings.

Webis now intends to focus on its San Francisco-based WatchandWager advance deposit wagering operation. In FY 2014, WatchandWager turnover rose 24% to $124.5m, two-thirds of which came from its Cal Expo racetrack in California. Turnover in Asia and Europe was up 9% and 237% respectively after the company inked deals with the Hong Kong Jockey Club and the Swedish Horse Racing Totalisator Board.

Las Vegas Sands wins trademark infringement suit against First Cagayan

A US federal judge is considering imposing sanctions on casino operator Las Vegas Sands for redacting data from documents related to the wrongful termination suit of former Sands China president Steve Jacobs.

The Jacobs v. Sands legal fight has been going on since 2010 and has expanded to include numerous defamation suits related to the two parties’ public sniping. On Tuesday, US District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez heard arguments from both sides as to what punishment Sands should receive for redacting personal information from around 7,900 documents related to the case.

Sands had originally claimed the documents sought by Jacobs couldn’t be removed from Macau due to the special administrative region’s Personal Data Protection Act. Sands was later found to have already exported the same data to its attorneys in Las Vegas, a revelation that prompted Gonzalez to fine Sands $25k. Sands was also ordered to turn over the documents to Jacobs’ attorneys, which is when the redactions came to light.

On Tuesday, Sands attorneys argued that they had no choice but to redact the personal info lest they upset Macau authorities. Jacobs’ attorney Todd Bice noted that the redaction process had cost Sands China around $2.4m, which he claimed demonstrated the futility of assessing purely monetary sanctions. Given Las Vegas Sands’ resources, Bice said the company’s intention was to “spend us all into the grave.” Gonzalez said she would issue a ruling early next week.

MORE ASIAN INFRINGERS TOLD TO PAY UP

Meanwhile, Sands has won another intellectual property infringement judgment against Asian online gambling sites, although collecting on that judgment will be a more difficult endeavor.

In March 2014, Sands sued First Cagayan Leisure & Resort Corporation, Wann Yichen, Qing Wan Leng and the unknown registrants of 54 online gambling websites, most of which boasted generic numbered domains linked by a directory site. Sands accused the sites of making liberal and unauthorized use of the Sands name, logo and other intellectual property.

RAWA Witness List Stacked Against Online Poker

The Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA) was supposed to get a hearing this Thursday in front of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations. That hearing has been pushed back due to inclement weather, as Washington D.C. is squarely on the “cold and wet” side of the dueling extreme winters plaguing […]

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PokerStars Servers Crash Halts Play For Two Hours

PokerStars servers crashed at 4:40 AM EST yesterday morning, freezing play and interrupting games across all of its network domains and around the world. Lee Jones, head of corporate communications for PokerStars confirmed the outage in a tweet saying, “Hi folks we know that @PokerStars is down the software guys are swarming on it. We’ll […]

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Sweden Poker Apps Removed From Apple’s App Store

Sweden poker fans considering moving to online play are finding the transition much more difficult after the Swedish Gaming Board asked Apple to remove all gambling apps targeting its citizens. The country currently has a state-run monopoly on both land-based and mobile gambling through its company Svenska Spel. Although Sweden’s decision to prohibit an open […]

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Twin River Casino acquires rival Newport Grand

The Twin River Casino is acquiring rival Newport Grand as competition from Massachusetts threatens to encroach on gambling revenue in Rhode Island. Rhode Island Public Radio reports that Twin River confirmed Wednesday that it has acquired the purchase-and-sale agreement on Newport Grand held by businessmen Joseph Paolino Jr. and Paul Roiff.

Wynn v. Chanos slander suit dismissed with prejudice; Wynn gets Girls Gone Wild cash

Wynn Resorts casino magnate Steve Wynn’s defamation lawsuit against hedge fund manager Jim Chanos has been dismissed with prejudice.

Wynn filed suit in September following comments Chanos made at a panel discussion at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism last April. Chanos, who manages the Kynikos Associates fund, told attendees that he’d reduced his holdings in Macau-based casino firms – including Wynn Macau – over fears that Macau’s junket industry left such companies open to potential violations of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

In December, US District Judge William Orrick dismissed Wynn’s suit, saying Chanos’ comments couldn’t be construed as suggesting Wynn had violated the FCPA. Wynn subsequently revised his lawsuit but Orrick wasn’t swayed, issuing a judgment on Tuesday saying anyone “need look no further than the transcript” of the event” to conclude that Chanos’ comments “do not amount to a statement of fact, but rather an opinion that is not actionable.” Adding insult to injury, Orrick ordered Wynn to pay Chanos’ court costs.

In a more positive development, Wynn will see a little more scratch from his pursuit of gambling debts owed by Joe Francis, the former ‘brains’ behind the Girls Gone Wild (GGW) soft-core porn company.

GGW filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2013 to protect its assets from court judgments giving Wynn permission to take the assets as partial repayment of Francis’ unpaid casino markers. Wynn was also awarded hefty judgments after winning defamation suits against Francis.

Last April, the GGW brand was sold for $1.8m to a Liquidity Capital-led investment group. On Monday, a bankruptcy court ruled that the proceeds of this sale will be divvied up between GGW creditors, including Steve.

Meanwhile, Francis and his girlfriend Abbey Wilson have an April 2 hearing in a federal court to determine if they should go to jail for failing to turn over two luxury cars belonging to the GGW estate. Francis has claimed that a Mexican strip club owner took the vehicles as compensation for several GGW promotions that never materialized.