Unions representing America’s professional athletes say they’re entitled to compensation from daily fantasy sports (DFS) operators, a stance that could extend to the country’s new legal betting environment.

On Friday, representatives of the player unions of all four major pro sports (MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL), plus Major League Soccer, the WNBA and the Women’s National Team Players Association filed an amicus curiae brief in the Indiana Supreme Court case involving DFS operators DraftKings and FanDuel.

The case was filed in 2016 by three college football players who argued that they were entitled to compensation for the use of their names, likeness and statistical data by DFS operators. An NFL wideout filed a similar case against FanDuel in Maryland in 2015.

The case centered on Indiana’s ‘right of publicity’ statute, but lower courts have determined that the DFS operators’ use of the players’ identities falls within the statute’s exceptions for ‘newsworthiness’ and ‘public interest.’ The athletes have appealed these rulings and now the pro player unions are adding their weight to the argument.

UK-based mobile-only bankers Monzo have pledged to introduce a new feature allowing customers to block all gambling transactions from their Monzo accounts.

Currently, Monzo says its policies regarding suspected problem gambling activity includes identifying patterns of behavior, then starting a “sensitive, tactful conversation” with the customer and potentially pointing them in the direction of the GamCare charity, which provides free software to block customers’ access to gambling sites.

This week, Monzo announced that it was adding functionality to its mobile app ‘in the next few weeks” that will allow users to self-exclude directly from their bank account. The feature will be included in the app’s settings, which, if switched on, will prevent the use of customers’ Monzo accounts from being used for gambling purposes, be it online or land-based.

Monzo said its new feature will rely on identifying merchant category codes, and the company will “do our best to block any payments you try to make” to merchants whose codes indicate a gambling connection.

Central and Eastern European gaming operator Fortuna Entertainment Group (FEG) saw its profit increase tenfold in the first quarter of 2018 following its year of acquisitions.

Figures released this week show the Czech Republic-based FEG’s revenue nearly tripling year-on-year to €77m in the three months ending March 31, while earnings shot up 665.5% to €22.7m and net profit soared 923.6% to €14m.

FEG CEO Per Widerström credited the growth to “operational excellence, new platforms and regional expansion,” the latter category having received a serious boost through a series of acquisitions that firmly established FEG in Romania and Croatia, building on its existing presence in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.

The gains weren’t entirely due to acquisitions, as organic revenue (excluding Hattrick Sports and Fortuna Romania) was up 63.2% to €40.2m while organic earnings more than tripled to €12.3m.

Australian independent MP Andrew Wilkie has been taking notes when the UK government announced its new policy on fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs).

ABC News reported that Wilkie called for a more stringent measure against pokies, which he claimed to be preying on the society’s “most vulnerable.” He hope that the Australian government would take a leaf out of the UK’s move to slash the FOBTs maximum stake to £2 (US$2.69).

Wilkie, who had been a staunch enemy of pokies machine operators, lamented that his plea had always fallen on deaf ears, saying that the Australian government continuously turned a blind eye on the problem and repeatedly rejected policies that would rein the gaming machines.

“The Federal Government has it within its power to legislate for $1 maximum bets, as well as other harm minimization measures like mandatory pre-commitment,” Wilkie said, according to the news outlet. “Unfortunately, the Government has shown itself to be thoroughly uninterested when it comes to reining in poker machines.”

Net income of Leisure and Resorts World Corp. (LRWC) took a nosedive by 69.7 percent in the first quarter of 2018 after the Philippine-listed gambling firm pulled out their investments from the City of Dreams Manila (COD Manila) project.

Financial data provided by LRWC showed that its consolidated net income fell to PHP82.4 million ($1.57 million) in the first three months of the year from PHP272.1 million (US$5.46 million) reported in the same period last year.

LRWC noted that its consolidated income would have increased by PHP34 million ($649,338) if not for the series of unfortunate events that had happened in the company. The Philippine-listed firm mainly attributed the net income decline to its decision to divest PHP173 million ($3.3 million) from COD Manila project.

It would be recalled the LRWC, through its wholly-owned subsidiary AB Leisure Global Inc., sold its interest in COD Manila to Belle Corp. in November 2016. LWRC remained an investor of COD Manila until March 31, 2017.