The Sun Group is the only operator approved to develop a casino in Vietnam’s Van Don Economic Zone in Quang Ninh province, according to local officials.

On Friday, Vietnam Investment Review reported that the Quang Ninh People’s Committee had replied to a request by the Sun Group, which sought to confirm that it is the only developer that has received approval to operate casino gambling in the region’s special economic zone.

The Sun Group was apparently prompted to seek this confirmation after reports circulated last month that another developer, FLC Group, had received the green light from Quang Ninh officials to build its own $2b integrated resort casino in the Van Don zone.

The April 17 letter from Quang Ninh People’s Committee deputy chair Nguyen Van Thanh unequivocally states that Sun Group “is the province’s strategic developer, and was chosen by the province to report to the prime minister as the only developer of the luxury resort-entertainment complex with a casino, according to the master plan approved by the prime minister, and allowed to pilot allowing Vietnamese citizens to play in the casino.”

Online lottery betting operator Lottoland appears to be making major moves to bolster its Australian market presence.

On Thursday, the Australian Financial Review’s Street Talk column reported that a mystery buyer had purchased 2.25m shares in lottery re-seller Jumbo Interactive after the market closed on Wednesday. The shares, which represent 5.1% of Jumbo’s issued equity, changed hands at a 28% premium to their current stock price.

Under Australian Stock Exchange rules, the size of the purchase requires the buyer to be identified via a substantial shareholder notice, so all will be known within a few days. But the AFR claimed that Lottoland was the purchaser, fulfilling the company’s long-held ambitions of acquiring a piece (and possibly much more) of Jumbo’s action.

Jumbo operates the OzLotteries website under license from Tatts Group, Australia’s dominant lottery operator. Jumbo used to run a German lottery business but shut the loss-making operation down last November based on its view that the market conditions didn’t favor the reselling model. (This view isn’t shared by Lottoland, which recently declared its intentions to launch a German-facing site.)

Pennsylvania is enjoying what it describes as “the highest month ever” for table games revenue, according to the latest figures released by the state regulator.

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board announced this week that March 2017’s gross table games revenue grew to US$ 79.54 million compared to last year’s US$77.91 million.

Figures provided by the Pennsylvania regulator showed that Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem leads the 12 casinos in terms of gross table games revenue in March 2017 with US$21.36 million, up 8.58 percent from US$19.68 million in March 2016.

But the highest gross table games revenue was posted by Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course, which grew 21.72 percent to US$3.5 million compared to US$2.9 million it recorded in the same period last year.

Despite the decreased influx of Chinese tourists, South Korea’s Paradise City casino resort is gearing up to welcome an estimated 1.5 million visitors in 2017.

The glitzy $1.1 billion Paradise City, considered to be the first Las Vegas-style integrated resort in Northeast Asia, opened at Yeongjong Island near Incheon International Airport last Thursday, amid concerns that it may become the latest victim of Beijing’s ire following South Korea’s decision to install an anti-missile battery.

South Korean casino operator Paradise Co. Ltd.’s solution to the potential drop in the number of Chinese tourists is to diversify the market by attracting visitors from Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong.

“Most of our customers individually visit Korea, so they are actually not influenced by the travel ban of the Chinese government,” Paradise Co. chairman and chief executive Chun Phil-lip said in a media briefing. “But we will deal with the issue in a conservative way, and we hope more Chinese customers return to Korea during next year’s PyeongChang Winter Olympics.”

A proposed constitutional amendment that will require voters’ approval for new casinos in Florida has secured the backing of majority of the Supreme Court (SC) justices.

Miami Herald reported that the Supreme Court was more divided when it sided in favor of the proposed amendment that give voters the “exclusive right to decide whether to authorize casino gambling.”

The SC vote was 4-2 with Chief Justice Jorge Labarga and Justices Barbara Pariente, Peggy Quince and Charles Canady in the majority. Those who dissented in the popular opinion were Justices Ricky Polston and R. Fred Lewis dissenting. Justice Alan Lawson, who joined the court at the end of December, did not take part.

In his dissenting opinion, Polston pointed out that the proposed constitutional amendment that will restrict the expansion of gambling in the state is misleading and violates the single-subject requirement.