This is a guest contribution by Derek Coetzee, Innovation Architect at mLabs. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.

Competition commissions and takeover panels exist not as a retirement home for long-serving civil service types to pass away their dotage in the style to which they have become accustomed but rather because M&A activity is inherently anti-competitive.

The phrase of the moment in the betting space is ‘gaining scale’ – or taking competitors out of the market to put it in plainer language. Even if the relevant competition authorities don’t end up intervening in any given corporate action, the consumer will inevitably be faced with less choice once a deal comes to fruition.

So with the current spate of deals in the online betting space we can see a market shaping up that will contain fewer operators, even if some of the separate brand names live on with a kind of nuclear half-life as the larger entities persist with, presumably competition-authority pleasing, dual-brand strategies.

Junket operators in Macau are packing their bags, thanks to negative headlines and fears of theft in the city state.

Grant Govertsen, analyst at Union Gaming Securities Asia Limited, believe the VIP story in Macau will continue to decline as more operators seek “safer” investment opportunities outside Macau following the Dore theft case.

“Consider that a junket investor sees—on a daily basis—the VIP story in Macau continue to decline for many reasons. At the same time, this investor hears about individuals who lost money in the Dore situation and is reminded of the similar Kimren situation from 2014. The natural reaction, in our view, would be to seek alternative investments,” Govertsen said in a note.

Dore Group, a junket operator under Wynn Resorts, recently lost HKD 2 billion to internal thievery. Dore’s operations reportedly account for between 4 percent and 5 percent of Macau’s total VIP gambling turnover, which is worth between HKD 9 billion to HKD 13 billion per month.

The glacial pace of online gambling regulation in the United States is being blamed for a seven-figure H1 loss at UK-listed gaming software firm GAN (formerly GameAccount Network).

Despite a modest increase in gross income to £13.4m, GAN reported a pre-tax net loss of £2.6m in the first six months of 2015, compared to a £900k loss in H1 2014. Net revenue fell 31% to £2.9m, while underlying net revenue fell a more reasonable 6% once you exclude the impact of £1.1m in system sales last year.

While GAN provides Betfair’s New Jersey-facing site with an online casino product, GAN CEO Dermot Smurfitt credited/blamed the “slower than expected pace” of real-money online gambling regulation in the US for the torrent of red ink on GAN’s H1 results, while highlighting the growth in the company’s Simulated Gaming operations.

GAN’s free-play operations reported revenue of £1.2m, up sharply from £200k in the same period last year. Smurfitt said Simulated Gaming enjoyed a 285% year-on-year increase in the number of active player days, while early figures from Q3 indicate active player days up 420%. Gross purchases from Simulated Gaming rose 330% to $2.8m in H1.

PokerStars has announced that the 2015 World Championship of Online Poker has been its richest in its 14-year history, and Ukrainian player “solik1968” wins the $1m first prize in the Dream Team Collection promotion.

Who said poker was dying on its ass!

PokerStars, and their customers, continue to find the time to plough their money into the online version of the game, after making this year’s World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) the richest in the tour’s 14-year history.

The online poker room that other online poker rooms covet laid on 70-events, and promised to supply $45m in guaranteed prize money. By the end of the festival punters had pummeled $66,245,305 into their online accounts, and that beat the previous record, held by WCOOP 2010, by some $3m.

Genting Casino and Living It Loving It celebrates 50-years in the casino business by hosting a £50,000 Super High Roller event in the Genting Palm Beach Casino in Mayfair

Genting Casino turns 50 this year. To celebrate they are hosting a £50,000 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE) Super High Roller event at the Genting Palm Beach Casino pitched in that purple patch on the Monopoly board that always hurts when you land on it.

Living It Loving It is the exclusive promoters for the event and is working diligently behind the scenes to fill the chairs with the right combination of world class players, Palm Beach regulars and very rich businessmen and women.

The event has been christened The 50/50 Genting Super High Roller. It will take place over three days between Mon – Wed 5-7 October. The event will start at noon each day, starting stacks will be 100k, levels will consist of 60-minutes and it will be a re-entry event. Poker players will be encouraged to give as well as take. On Wed 7 Oct there will be a £500 CHIPS for Charity tournament. 50% of the prize money will go towards a new wheelchair for a disabled child. It’s hoped to raise £6,500+ for the child in need, so be fruitful with your giving.

Lee Davy provides you with an update on the progress of Raising for Effective Giving (REG) with a look at their Q2 numbers.

My son is 14 years of age. If he chooses to leave school early, he will be looking for a job in less than two years time. I use the word ‘job’ instead of ‘career’ because at the age of 14 he has no idea what career he would like to have.

A dirty piece of math will show that my son will spend roughly 80,000 hours working in the career he is yet to choose. That’s a long time. I suggest he thinks long and hard about his decision.

As you are reading this then the likelihood is that you are a poker player. It seems pretty cool to spend 80,000 hours playing poker. It sure beats spending 80,000 hours working in the blast furnace of a steel mill.