Amaya has just announced its first quarter profits for 2017, and things are going better than expected, thanks to PokerStars. Perhaps that’s what’s spurred the announcement of an impending corporate […]
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D. Wayne Lukas assured the connections of Gunnevera they made the right call in making plans to send the chestnut colt to Baltimore following his seventh-place finish in the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (G1).
Atlantic City casinos posted the year’s first monthly revenue decline, although the numbers (as always) look more favorable once you play the apples and oranges game.
On Friday, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) released its summary of Atlantic City’s brick-and-mortar gaming revenue for the month of April, during which revenue fell 3.6% year-on-year to $191m.
However – in Atlantic City’s ever-changing market, there’s always a ‘however’ – subtracting contributions from the now-shuttered Trump Taj Mahal and comparing only the seven casinos functioning this year and last, April’s brick-and-mortar gaming revenue was up 4.2%. Throw in the $20.8m earned by the state’s online gambling operators and April’s total gaming win is up 5.8% to $211.7m.
The year-to-date numbers for the current operators are more impressive, with total gaming win up 11% to $843.6m.
Atlantic City casinos posted the year’s first monthly revenue decline, although the numbers (as always) look more favorable once you play the apples and oranges game.
On Friday, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) released its summary of Atlantic City’s brick-and-mortar gaming revenue for the month of April, during which revenue fell 3.6% year-on-year to $191m.
However – in Atlantic City’s ever-changing market, there’s always a ‘however’ – subtracting contributions from the now-shuttered Trump Taj Mahal and comparing only the seven casinos functioning this year and last, April’s brick-and-mortar gaming revenue was up 4.2%. Throw in the $20.8m earned by the state’s online gambling operators and April’s total gaming win is up 5.8% to $211.7m.
The year-to-date numbers for the current operators are more impressive, with total gaming win up 11% to $843.6m.
With rain in the forecast, handicapper Dave Litfin sizes up Saturday’s top stakes.
Abel Tasman emerged none the worse for wear following her 1 1/4-lengths Oaks triumph and could resurface in the June 10 Acorn Stakes (G1) at Belmont Park should she continue to enthuse her Hall of Fame conditioner with her ability to bounce back.
Stellar Wind worked five furlongs at Santa Anita Park in 1:00 2/5 May 12, while Songbird fired a :59 bullet there going the same distance May 11.
Jon and Patience Jazdzewski’s Therighttobeararms became the first winner for the late stallion Fast Bullet when she took a maiden claiming race for 2-year-old fillies at Churchill Downs May 11 in her second start.
A Street Sense colt purchased at last year’s Keeneland September yearling sale for $15,000 lit up the bid board during the May 12 Arqana breeze up sale in France, selling for a sale record €1.4 million (US$1,521,660).
Conquest Mo Money’s odyssey across the country via truck and trailer will continue May 13.
For racing fans, journalists, writers, college professors, historians, Keeneland employees and countless others seeking information about Keeneland and the Thoroughbred industry, one sure bet has been the Library’s Head Librarian, Cathy Schenck.
A sloppy track forced trainer Todd Pletcher to cancel his plan to gallop Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (G1) winner Always Dreaming May 12 at Pimlico Race Course.
New Jersey’s regulated online gambling market failed to maintain its record-setting pace in April but still managed to produce double-digit year-on-year gains.
Figures released Friday by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement show state-licensed online gambling operators generating revenue of $20.8m in April. The figure is 22.6% higher than the same month last year but below the record $21.7m the operators produced in March of this year.
April’s showers of revenue were almost entirely due to online casino operations, which shot up 31% year-on-year to $18.85m, although this was $1m less than March’s tally. Online poker revenue not only failed to match March’s $2.25m, but fell nearly 24% year-on-year to just under $2m.
The Golden Nugget’s casino-only online operations, which include the local operations of UK outfit Betfair and Pennsylvania’s SugarHouse Casino, maintained its status as the state’s top earner with just under $5.4m. This is significantly higher than April 2016’s $3.3m but well back of March 2016’s record $6.17m.
Police raided a thrice-weekly poker game being run out of a Candlewood Suites hotel room in Smyrna, Tennessee, a small town outside of Nashville. The operation, according to police, was […]
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Administrators appointed to oversee the affairs of online poker operator PKR hope to sell the struggling company, or, failing an outright sale, the sale of its customer database and poker technology.
On Thursday, the UK High Court appointed RSM Restructuring Advisory as administrators of PKR.com’s parent companies, PKR Ltd and PKR Technologies Ltd, which shut down abruptly last week, citing “recent financial difficulties.” In addition to dealing with the ongoing decline of the global online poker market, the Microgaming Poker Network site had struggled following exits from a number of European regulated online markets.
RSM’s David Taylor issued a statement saying the administrators’ first priority was to seek “a buyer for the business and assets as a whole. Alternatively, we will seek a buyer for the player database and other assets.” The statement offered no timeline for this process to unfold.
The ultimate fate of PKR customer deposits remains murky. While PKR is believed to have had enough cash on hand to cover its obligations to players, the company’s creditors are also expecting to get paid, and RSM’s statement said it was obligated to “maximize realizations for the benefit of all creditors.”
Canadian online gambling operator Amaya Gaming plans to rebrand and relocate to Toronto after posting better than expected results in the first quarter of 2017.
Figures released Friday show Amaya’s revenue rising 10% year-on-year to US$317.3m in the first three months of 2017, while adjusted earnings shot up 22% to $151m and net earnings rose 18.5% to $65.7m, thanks in part to an $11.6m reduction in general and administrative expenses.
The parent company of PokerStars reported online poker revenue inching up 1.1% to $218.7m, the first such rise in three quarters. However, the poker numbers were flat in constant currency terms.
The company’s efforts to pivot away from its pure poker roots continue to pay off, as poker’s share of the overall revenue pie fell to 69% in Q1, down from 75% in the same period last year. Combined casino/sports revenue shot up 47% to $88.3m.
As the debate over bitcoin’s future rages on, developers have started laying out plans to alleviate the congestion on the blockchain network.
Leading the fight are several groups including Bitcoin Unlimited, which are pressing to increase the current 1MB block size for a more robust bitcoin environment despite the continued insistence of the other camp—aka Bitcoin Core—that blockchain’s original design is doing fine in its current form.
Core was recently found to have been slipping new signatures into the code, and in the process, may have been slowly subverting the system with each update without lodging a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) and, more importantly, without a consensus.
Bitcoin Unlimited to the rescue
The government of Victoria, a state in southeast Australia, is gearing up to take a slice of the online gambling pie.
According to Australian media outlet Herald Sun, the Andrews government has slipped in a “radical proposed shake-up to gaming tax” to the Budget papers even though Victoria has agreed with Canberra and other treasurers not to touch on the “punters tax” issue until the national online gambling framework is examined.
The proposal, if passed, will see Victoria rake in AUD150 million (US$110.69 million) each year in tax grab from online gambling players, which would help the state “prop up its surplus,” according to the news outlet.
Victoria’s Budget papers noted that the government plans to develop a point of consumption tax (POCT) for bookmakers, which Shadow treasurer Michael O’Brien described as a “sneaky, new tax.”
May 12, 2017: Award-winning technology provider BetConstruct secures Controlled Skill Games Supply Licence from Malta Gaming Authority. This license allows BetConstruct to offer its Fantasy Sports Product, which includes soccer, American football, Basketball, Baseball and Ice Hockey, on a B2C and B2B level.
BetConstruct COO, Sergey Harutyunyan, commented: “BetConstruct have spent much time developing and improving our unique fantasy sports product over the past year and complying to the strict MGA technical standards is a reward to our work. Operators can integrate BetConstruct’s fantasy product onto their existing platforms or use as part of our full turkey solution, utilising Spring Gaming Platform. It provides players with more choice and options, and operators with new revenue channels and unique products to enhance brand loyalty.”
European operators can take full advantage of BetConstruct’s Fantasy Sports that has recently been upgraded with a number of innovative functions, including customisable points systems, contest duration flexibility and in-play substitutions in soccer.
Earlier this month, BetConstruct had successfully added both Casino and Pool betting to its B2C UK Gambling Commission Remote betting licences.
[Berlin, May 2017] Blockchain Expo Europe, the leading conference and exhibition covering blockchain technologies and its practical uses on global industries, has announced the addition of Deloitte and PwC to the line-up for its Berlin event on 1-2 June 2017.
The event, which takes place at the Estrel Congress Center, will see Deloitte and PwC speaking at the Blockchain for Industry conference track.
Deloitte has published several reports and articles on the rise and expected impact of blockchain, naming it as one of its eight tech trends for 2017 and noting that blockchain is “changing our digital landscape… it will change the way consumers interact with each other, and the way in which traditional digital services are provided across all industries globally,” while PwC has said it sees “enormous potential” for blockchain in financial services.
“These latest additions to our speaker line-up emphasise the increasing importance of blockchain technologies in a variety of use cases, as well as noting its implications to reach a much wider community,” said Ian Johnson, event director, Blockchain Expo. “We are delighted to feature the expertise of Deloitte and PwC for our event attendees.”