In this episode of the CalvinAyre.com Rundown, Stephanie Raquel brings you the top industry news and the latest on Taiwan seizes $380k from men returning from Macau casinos,
Mor Weizer: No changes in Playtech with Sagi share sell-off, Philippine regulator dispatching on-site agents to monitor online gambling licensees.
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Authorities in China have released 10 staff members of Australian casino operator Crown Resorts on Wednesday, less than a year after they were arrested for promoting gambling in the Asian country.
Four employees, including Australian nationals Jerry Xuan and Pan Dan, were the first to emerge from a Shanghai detention facility, Reuters reported.
The report also quoted a man who identified himself as a lawyer for the detainees’ families—but declined to give his name—saying that Chinese authorities also released six other Crown staffers from a second facility in Shanghai.
With this, only six Crown-affiliated staffers remain in Chinese authorities’ custody, including Jason O’Connor, who is expected to be freed in August.
In this interview with CalvinAyre.com’s Becky Liggero,, Mor Weizer of Playtech talks about the future of the company in light of Sagi sell-off
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Manila, Philippines, July 12, 2017 – The Asian Poker Tour is set to host its next festival, the APT Philippines 2017, at the luxurious Winford Hotel & Casino in Manila, Philippines. This will be the APT’s first major poker event held at the newly erected five-star establishment. The nine-day event runs from July 19th-27th featuring a PHP 110,000 buy-in APT Main Event and17 highly crated APT signature side events.
The PHP 110,000 buy-in APT Main Event is the highlight tournament of the APT Philippines 2017. This is a deep-stacked No Limit Hold’em tournament with blinds increasing at a slow and steady sixty-minute pace. It is the most prestigious event offered, and it is the only event where you can win the exclusive APT Championship Ring. Five of these solid silver bands have already been awarded this year with the past two claimed by Malaysians Aik
Chuanand Choong Kian Weng.
**There are three APT Main Event Satellites offered on the schedule
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., July 2017 — Vision Venture Partners (VVP), a private equity firm whose founders combine decades of business success and value creation from the high tech, video game, professional and lifestyle industries, announced the appointment of Chris Nordling as Chief Operating Officer (COO), effective immediately. Nordling will be responsible for overseeing daily operations and strategic planning for each of VVP’s portfolio companies.
“As Vision Venture Partners expands to its next chapter, Chris’ extensive experience will be an important asset to the team,” said Amit Raizada, partner of VVP. “Given his proven track record in handling billion dollar operations and years of financial oversight experience, we knew he was the right fit to join our ranks as we continue to add to our portfolio in alignment with our growth strategy.”
Nordling has deep corporate operations and finance experience, including leading both MGM Resorts International and Hilton Hotels into multibillion-dollar fiscal, administrative and operational success. He served as CFO for Mirage Resorts and Bellagio as well as President of corporate entities for MGM Resorts and led a hotel casino and various operating divisions, which resulted in generating more than $2 billion in revenue and $500 million in profit.
“Chris has transformed every business he’s touched – from shaping the business plan to launching new divisions and building world-class financial management infrastructures,” said Stratton Sclavos, partner of VVP. “Jace Hall, one of our partners, and I are confident he will align Vision Venture Partners’ goals with operational best practices to enable VVP’s portfolio companies to achieve their full potential.”
In the fertile and evolving Nigerian gambling market, BtoBet is organizing an exclusive roadshow dedicated to the local operators, ready to step into the developing scenario towards mobile.
Preparing the roadshow in Nigeria, BtoBet has interviewed the director of Global Gaming Africa to explore the expert’s point of view about the local market. If you wish to discover more, download the Interview here “BtoBet interviews John Kamara on Nigeria’s betting market.”
The Nigerian market is showing a growing number of mobile users – 150 million – and a great diffusion of mobile payments with 81% of the population using mainly USSD, credit cards and sometimes Bitcoins as the preferred payment methods. Additionally, 67 million local people – 45% of Nigerian mobile users – are displaying a strong interest in shopping online and in mobile Apps. These are clear signals operators have to consider when planning their business strategy and to stay ahead of the competition.
During the upcoming Sports Betting West Africa event in Lagos, regulators, operators and technology suppliers of the gambling industry will discuss current trends and future directions of the industry. BtoBet’s chairman, Alessandro Fried is going to attend the summit at the Federal Palace Hotel & Casino in Lagos, taking part in the panel:
LAS VEGAS, July 2017 — Scientific Games Corporation (NASDAQ: SGMS) (“Scientific Games” or the “Company”) announced today the installation of its suite of system products at Aliante Casino+Hotel+Spa. The casino resort, which was acquired by Boyd Gaming in September 2016, is located in North Las Vegas, Nevada.
Scientific Games installed its core casino and slot management solutions to manage Aliante’s 1,860 slot machines and 40 table games.
Included in the installation was Scientific Games’ iVIEW® and iVIEW Display Manager (“DM”) on-device messaging and player-user interface technology, as well as the Elite Bonusing Suite® of applications, which will enable Aliante to interface with and reward players right at the gaming device.
Aliante, a AAA Four Diamond resort, features an 82,000-square-foot casino floor, a 170-seat race and sports book, a 202-room hotel, a 16-screen movie theater, a 650-seat showroom, 14,000 square feet of event space, and a resort-style pool.
Stockholm, July 2017 — Nasdaq (Nasdaq: NDAQ) announces that the trading in Aspire Global plc.’s shares (short name: ASPIRE) commenced today on Nasdaq First North Premier in Stockholm. Aspire Global belongs to the consumer services sector and is the 71st company to be admitted to trading on Nasdaq’s Nordic markets* in 2017.
Aspire Global is a Business to Business (B2B) service provider for the online gaming market and offers its partners a full-service solution for launching and operating online casinos. The company has more than ten years of experience in managing casino networks and developing in-house proprietary technology, and can therefore allow its clients to focus completely on marketing their casino brand and generate traffic to the casino. Aspire Global was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Silema, Malta. For more information, please visit www.aspireglobal.com.
“First of all, I would like to express my gratitude towards Nasdaq for their warm welcome and strong support throughout this process,” said Tsachi Maimon, CEO of Aspire Global. “We have met a fantastic interest from investors, including some established and renowned firms. I believe the strong demand for subscribing to Aspire Global’s shares confirms a high level of confidence in our strategy, the strength of our unique offering and the great potential of our iGaming platform within the market.”
“We welcome Aspire Global to Nasdaq First North Premier, our European growth market,” said Adam Kostyál, SVP and Head of European listings at Nasdaq. “Aspire Global is the most recent addition to our family of online gaming companies, and we look forward to supporting the company with the increased visibility that comes with a Nasdaq First North Premier listing.”
The merger of daily fantasy sports operators DraftKings and FanDuel may not proceed due to regulatory hurdles, according to FanDuel’s chief executive.
On Tuesday, Recode published an interview with FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccles in which he stated that his company was “evaluating options” that included walking away from the proposed merger with DraftKings if the companies can’t convince the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that the linkup won’t significantly decrease competition in the DFS marketplace.
In mid-June, the FTC filed suit to block the merger based on the regulator’s belief that the combined entity would control over 90% of the US DFS market. The companies have argued that their alleged DFS dominance has to be seen in the context of the much larger weekly- and season-long fantasy market. An administrative trial has been set for November and the parties will hold a scheduling conference this Friday (14).
Ever since the FTC filing, both Eccles (pictured) and DraftKings CEO Jason Robins have repeatedly stated that they are “considering all our options” but Eccles’ comments to Recode also included comments on his belief that FanDuel was enjoying “probably the fastest growh in the company’s history” and could succeed on its own if the merger is scrapped. (The FanDuel brand was reportedly slated to be absorbed into DraftKings’ operation if the merger went ahead.)
In today’s World Series of Poker review, Mike Wattel made it bracelet #2 after beating Chris Ferguson in the heads-up phase of the $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship, and the Main Event draws 7,221 players – the third largest in the past 48-years.
There was a baseball stadium full of people who wanted Mike Wattel to beat the living crap out of Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson in the heads-up phase of Event #72: $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship, but Wattel was laser-focused on one person – himself.
That type of intensity comes about when you last won a bracelet 18-years ago, and still had the memory of losing to Nick Schulman in the heads-phase of the $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball in 2012. Full Tilt Ponzi schemes don’t enter the equation.
Jesus and the resurrection continue to spark debate throughout the poker community over his involvement in the World Series of Poker (WSOP). Had he beat Wattel, when heads-up, he would have taken the lead in the Player of the Year (POY) race, but Wattel put an end to that by taking the most lusted after scalp in this series.
July 2017 | SBTech, the multi-award-winning sports betting provider, has become the first sportsbook platform supplier to enter the Cypriot market with the launch of winmasters.com.cy. It represents the next step in the fast-rising operator’s expansion strategy and comes only six months after the agreement between SBTech and Winmasters was signed.
Winmasters will now offer SBTech’s industry-leading sportsbook to Cypriot players, in both Greek and English, with all major European payment methods available.
Having been the first B2B sports betting provider in markets such as Portugal, the Czech Republic and Romania over the past two years, SBTech has now cemented its position as the partner of choice for operators in newly regulated markets.
Winmasters is now supported by SBTech in two regulated territories, following its recent launch in the Romanian market. It becomes one of the eight operators to be awarded a Class B license by the Cypriot National Betting Authority (NBA).
Two teams with nearly identical records have been the best teams in baseball heading into the second half of the season. So it makes perfect sense to see the Los Angeles Dodgers (61-29) and Houston Astros (60-29) as the betting favorites to win the National and American League pennants, respectively.
Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com
The Dodgers are +240 chalk to win the NL and have been on an absolute tear, going 26-4 over their last 30 games to take a 7.5-game lead on the Arizona Diamondbacks (53-36) in the NL West.
The Colorado Rockies (52-39) had led the NL West division standings early on, but a recent skid caused them to plummet 9.5 games behind Los Angeles and two back of Arizona. The Rockies are +1000 to win the NL with the Diamondbacks sitting as the +600 fourth choice to take the pennant.
Horse industry newcomer Larry Best struck again, going to $1 million to acquire a Medaglia d’Oro filly during the waning minutes of the Fasig-Tipton July selected yearling sale, highlighting a strong auction that kicked off the yearling sale season.
PokerStars have partnered with the digital media kings Unilad, and the World Series of Poker has agreed to auction one of the spare Tag Team bracelets on eBay with the proceeds going to Raising for Effective Giving.
PokerStars and the British Internet media company, Unilad, have entered into a global partnership that will see the pair co-create digital media content.
Unilad began life in 2010, quickly becoming the number one university student’s lad’s mag in the UK. They currently have a reach that extends to over a billion weekly users, including one of the most viewed Facebook pages in the world.
Poker and lads mags go together like an armchair and a TV, so the deal should suit both companies down to the ground. PokerStars recently launched the #Gameon social media campaign featuring Usain Bolt and Kevin Hart. Unilad covered the launch with an article on their wesbite.
Three PokerStars related stories as Jeff Gross joins Team Pro; PokerStars sponsor the IAAF Monaco Diamond League 100m Race and launch MEGASTACK in New Jersey.
Jeff Gross has joined PokerStars.
The 30-year-old from Ann Arbor, Michigan, was unveiled ahead of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event Day 1c, where Gross will wear a PokerStars patch for the first time.
The signing is another clear indication that the blueprint of the sponsored professional poker player contains a need to have access to a ready-made audience.
The push to roll back legal online gambling in the United States has taken a more bipartisan turn after a Democratic senator urging the Department of Justice to open a can of legal whoop-ass.
On Tuesday, The Hill reported that Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) had written a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions urging him to make good on his promise/threat to “revisit” the 2011 DOJ opinion that allowed individual states to decide for themselves whether to permit intrastate online gambling, so long as it didn’t involve sports betting.
Warner’s letter contains a greatest hits package of the usual anti-online canards, i.e. money laundering, collusion, and the “heightened threat to economically vulnerable populations.” (For the record, countless studies show that online gambling caters to individuals in higher economic brackets, while state-run lotteries overwhelmingly depend on those at the bottom of the scale.)
In addition to his logic being off the mark, Warner’s July 5th letter is also behind the times. Session made his “revisit” vow during his confirmation hearing in January, but Bloomberg reported late last month that Sessions had recused himself from further discussion on the online gambling question due to his ties to a lawyer that has lobbied on behalf of the Sheldon Adelson-financed Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling (CSIG).
The World Poker Tour announce plans to hold a televised European Championships in Germany, and Jon Borenstein beats 3,541 entrants to win the WPT500 at the ARIA.
The World Poker Tour (WPT) needs a bigger rucksack after announcing plans to host a televised WPT Main Event in Europe for the first time in four years.
The Season XVI WPT European Championship is scheduled to take place Jan 5-15, 2018, with the Spielbank Casino in Berlin, Germany acting as hosts.
It will be the first time the WPT has held a tournament in Germany, and the first time a European Main Event has been te
Michael McMahon, Wendy Moon, and Anita Motion have joined the Thoroughbred Education and Research Foundation’s board of trustees.
The Louisiana Racing Commission granted approval July 5 of the transfer of six turf stakes from Evangeline Downs to Harrah’s Louisiana Downs.
Industry groups in Pennsylvania will stay vigilant after Governor Tom Wolf on July 10 allowed an underfunded budget to become law without his signature.