This is a guest contribution by Riaan de Jager.  If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.

The stakes are high when it comes to the top results in organic Google search results. Competition for the top gambling keywords is fierce. Affiliates, operators and SEO agencies all jostle for position and those who work out how to push the boundaries without overstepping the mark will be richly rewarded.

So-called “white hat SEO’s” who are not familiar with industries like gambling will tell you to simply follow Google’s clear webmaster guidelines and you will prosper. They urge you to follow the coding guidelines, write great content so that people will link to your sites and bang! You’ll rank. This type of naïve advice can be extremely frustrating for webmasters who try to step into the more competitive SEO verticals, and you simply won’t get very far if you aren’t prepared to experiment.

I’m not for a minute advocating that you abandon all reason and go totally black hat in your SEO efforts, but a good dose of reality is not a bad idea when it comes to the gambling niche. Many top ranking sites appear to not be paying much attention to the written law of Google.

Brick-and-mortar casinos in Goa will have to pay to pay more to operate in the small Indian state.

The state government of Goa recently passed a legislation that hikes up—for the third year in a row—the license fees for land-based casinos. According to The Times of India, onshore casinos occupying up to 100 square meters will now be required to pay INR3.50 crore, or a little over USD523,500, every year for casino license fees. Last year, the government charged INR2.50 crore (USD373,900) in license fees for the same area.

For land casinos with a total area of more than 100 square meters up to 300 square meters, they will have to pay INR4.50 crore (USD673,100) in tax, up from last year’s INR3 crore (USD224,300), according to Home Department undersecretary Neetal Amonkar. Additionally, those larger than 300 square meters up to 500 square meters are now mandated to pay INR5 crore (USD748,000).

Fees are also increased for land-based casinos that are sized between 500 square meters and 750 square meters. Instead of INR4.5 crore (USD673,100), the largest sized casinos will now have to pay INR6.5 crore (USD972,500).

New York started August on a positive note when it finally allowed daily fantasy sports players to indulge their favorite pastime on a legal basis—a move that ticked gambling critics across the country.

And so, consistent with the notion that you can’t please everybody, Washington, D.C.-based group Stop Predatory Gambling is going to try reversing the newly enacted law. Les Bernal, national director of the anti-gambling group, told Buffalo News that he is considering suing to block the implementation of New York’s new law.

Gambling critics accused New York of not going “by the book” in order to legalize DFS, pointing out that instead of going through a lengthy constitutional amendment process, the state Legislature merely passed a statutory change declaring fantasy sports contests to be games of skill, and therefore exempt from the existing gambling laws.

“There is no single act of New York state government that creates more inequality of opportunity than its sponsorship of predatory gambling,” Bernal said, according to the report.

3-barrels of pure value for you including the 10-time World Series of Poker champion, Doyle Brunson, avoiding a robbery, a Russian uses stolen credit cards to play online poker, and Beth Shak reveals her strip poker playing past.

Doyle Brunson has told his 426,000 Twitter followers that he was close to being robbed at gunpoint a few days ago.

Brunson, who is a regular in the high stakes cash games in Las Vegas, was advised by police that a man was held at gunpoint a few doors down from where he lived with the assailant believing he was robbing a poker player who had $700,000 in cash on him. The man, who wasn’t a poker player, parted with $500 in exchange for the avoidance of a bullet to the head. The robber told his victim he was going to ‘kill his informant’ for the duff information.

Texas Dolly reacted by sending out a message to any prospective thieves of the future. He tweeted to anyone who likes to stick a stocking over their head that he always carries a gun when he walks from his car to his home; has alarms and motion detectors all over his house, and even if they did avoid all of those traps they wouldn’t find any money.

Social Responsibility has been confirmed as a top priority on the learning agenda at the first ever iGaming Education Forum, taking place during the SiGMA Conference in November (16/17/18), with key training sessions on compliance across the gaming industry to be delivered by experts from a variety of sectors. The Forum’s organisers, Malta-based iGaming Academy in partnership with SiGMA and the Malta Gaming Authority, have cemented their vision to “grow the industry through education” with the entire first day of the event dedicated to Compliance in iGaming, and focusing on topics such as responsible gaming, anti-money laundering and fraud prevention.

Social Responsibility in Gaming

Explaining their commitment to compliance across the gaming industry, iGaming Academy Director, Jaime Debono, stated: “Ensuring that companies act responsibly and meet their regulatory obligations is crucially important to the iGaming sector and gaming as a whole, not just to safeguard individuals, but to preserve the legacy of the industry too. It’s imperative that social responsibility is highlighted as a priority in the industry which is why our interactive and comprehensive courses are designed and delivered by leading industry experts and made suitable for any employee in a gaming or gaming-related operation, as well as attendees looking to enter into the industry.

“The gaming industry has overcome many pitfalls and prejudices over the years and it’s heartening to see so much progression surrounding the potential harms associated with gambling in the 21st Century. However, there are still areas the industry needs to focus on and develop, which is why we are proud to be dedicating an entire day to compliance and the policies and practices used to promote consumer protection and awareness,” he added. “Backed by over 80 years of gaming experience and with a fundamental aim to deliver the first education driven forum at SiGMA, we are looking forward to driving real change with our comprehensive compliance training programs in November.” 

Unibet has announced plans to host the Unibet Open in Bucharest and partypoker double their guarantee for the forthcoming partypoker Million in the Caribbean.

Unibet has plugged a gap in their current Unibet Open schedule after announcing plans to host an event in the Romanian capital of Bucharest.

The event will take place 1-4 December, and the Swedish operator believes it could be one of the biggest events they have ever organised after slapping a €500,000 guaranteed prize pool onto the tin – the highest guarantee in the tour’s nine-year history.

Unibet will work alongside Pokerfest Romania to ensure the event is a success. There will be an 800 player cap.

Although news of astounding esports enthusiast and viewership growth is covered on a daily basis, advertising spend is slower than its predecessors’ in traditional sports franchises.  However, experts speculate that brands that get involved in early adopter phase, as rules and regulations are still being founded in esports, will gain more loyalty than later ‘bandwagon’ advertisers.

It’s the classic chicken and egg conundrum.  When surveying 100 various influencers from game developers, publishers, brands, advertisers and legal firms, roughly 70% of them agreed with the sentiment that esports will play a critical role in their business strategies, whether large- or small-scale.  50% of the same group also stated that esports is ‘a platform with a lot of potential, but won’t be mainstream adopted (or sustainable) until the industry is stabilized with regulations and a governing body.’(1)

However, will waiting for the esports industry to fully professionalize cost consumer brands and agencies the first-to-market impact (and following loyalty) within the esports community?

“Esports already is a viable marketing channel for big brands to target an extremely valuable and difficult-to-reach demographic—relatively affluent, young males,” says Brum Blum, Founder of IME Law, and one of the first esports Attorneys. “The problem is many big brands lack a basic understanding of the industry and struggle to engage with the typical esports sponsorships (which heavily involve live-streaming and other less-common activations).”