The City of Dreams (CoD) in Macau was the site of a lot of action this past weekend, but not all of it was pleasant. Staff employed by Melco, which owns CoD, decided to hold a public protest outside the casino this weekend in an effort to force the company to boost their wages and provide bonuses. There were some discrepancies as to how many staffers participated, with the New Macau Gaming Staff Rights Association (NMGSRA) saying there were 3,000 and the Public Security Police counting only 850 at the height of the protest.

The employees want the casino to pay them what would amount to a fourteenth month in salary. Cloee Chao, who leads the NMGSRA, told local media, “Our demands are really simple. We hope that there will be a bonus in both Summer and Winter. We only want a 14-month-pay per year benefit. We also want dealers to receive their provident fund in full, which should include both the base salary and tips.”

The fight may stem from recent announcements by Wynn Macau and Sands China. Wynn indicated in July that it would be offering most of its employees a bonus equal to one-month’s gross salary, due to be paid tomorrow. Sands announced a similar deal, but its payout won’t take place until the end of the month.

Melco doesn’t give any perks to its employees, other than a contribution to the staffers’ retirement fund. The amount provided is calculated from each employee’s base salary.

Success Dragon has announced that it has put as much as 20% of its existing share capital into a placing agreement in an effort to raise funds for the repayment of loans and for future business development. The agreement stipulates that the shares will be priced at HK$0.24 (US$0.03) and that up to 414.7 million of the shares will be made available.

The Hong Kong-listed casino operator expects to gain around $12.4 million net from the sale. Approximately $6.11 million will go toward business development and about $2.72 million will be spent paying off a director’s loan and other payables. Any balance will be utilized as working capital for the company.

It would appear that the move comes as the company’s cash reserves have fallen substantially. It reportedly now only has cash and cash reserves of around $152,000, “all of which were intended to be used for the operations of its existing businesses.”

Revenue at the company declined by 25.7% in its latest fiscal year, according to a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The drop includes a decline of 18.2% for its “Outsources Business Process Management” segment, which covers electronic gaming machines. That segment, which accounts for 95% of the company’s overall revenue, lost around $13.6 million on the year.

The City of Dreams Manila played host to the Asian Poker Tour Main Event over the past couple of days, and the turnout was spectacular. 1,364 entries were counted for the game and just 41 made it to Day 3. But, there can be only one winner, and this year, the winner was Singapore’s Wilson Lim. He picked up $243,324 and a $30,000 PokerStars Platinum Pass for next January’s PokerStars Poker Champions tournament in the Bahamas.

All through the final day, players dropped quickly. When the last nine were ready to face off at the final table, things got serious and they all dug in. Yuan Chao Li from China began to bully the table, betting on everything, raising whenever possible and playing a game that was more like throwing darts to see what would stick than playing solid poker. It paid off, however, as Li would ultimately make it to the final heads-up battle.

Lim was the short stack for almost the entire day. He emerged from being down to one big blind after finding some lucky runs and turned his luck into a payday. He said after the game, “Before I came to the final table, there were two tables and I had less than one big blind, so I just went all-in blind. I doubled and doubled until I was a big stack.”

When asked about what it was like to win the largest APPT Main Event ever recorded, he said, “Awesome and overwhelming for me, I played very long hours for this one because the schedule is so tight and I got maybe less than six hours of sleep every night.”

Italy’s gambling operators enjoyed a solid July performance, even with the looming prospect of a total ban on advertising casting a pall over the market.

Figures published by gaming news outlet Agimeg show Italian sports betting operators generated combined retail and online revenue of €114.3m in July, up 32.4% from the same month last year. Retail betting revenue improved 30.8% to €62.8m while online wagering was up 34.4% to €51.5m.

For the year-to-date, overall betting revenue is up 43.3% to €852m, while online is up 43.5% to €361.5m. The government’s share of this bounty totaled nearly €168m, a figure that is sure to drop once the new prohibition on all forms of gambling advertising kicks in on January 1, 2019.

Perennial number one Bet365 maintained its online betting dominance in July, reporting turnover of €157m and revenue of €10.4m. Both figures were well ahead of closest rival SKS365, which could manage only €41.2m in turnover yet managed a far higher hold, resulting in revenue of €6.2m. Snaitech ruled the retail wagering charts with turnover of €59.5m and revenue of €11.8m.

Mexico’s Grupo Televisa conglomerate is once again flogging its PlayCity gaming operations, with some familiar names said to be among the potential buyers.

Last week, Mexican media outlets reported that Televisa was itching to sell its International Bets subsidiary, which includes the PlayCity Casino and PlayCity Apuestas businesses plus a daily and weekly raffle business. The PlayCity operations include 17 terrestrial gaming venues offering 7,200 electronic gaming machines, as well as online sports betting (powered by European tech provider Kambi)

Similar reports of an imminent sale emerged in May of this year, and likely candidates for acquiring the PlayCity brand included the Blackstone Group private equity giant, which acquired Spanish gaming operator Cirsa Gaming Corp this spring.

The new reports indicate that Blackstone remains among the frontrunners, along with Spanish gaming giant Codere, which already has a presence in Mexico via its Codere.mx site.

Greece could begin the tender for the country’s first major integrated resort casino in September, while dodging old claims of illegal state aid to government-run casinos.

Last week, the Hellenic Gaming Commission (HGC) announced the launch of a public consultation on the terms of the sole casino license at the proposed €8b integrated resort at Athens’ former Hellinikon airport. Interested parties have been asked to submit their comments and proposals before September 10.

The Greek regulator has been under pressure to commence the tender, given the government’s expectations for the mammoth project’s ability to jumpstart the country’s ailing economy. It’s been four years since an international consortium signed a 99-year land lease and the government is itching to realize the thousands of jobs the project is expected to create.

Progress on the resort, which will include hotels, theme parks, conference and exhibition facilities and a whole lot more, is also a key condition of the government’s ongoing financial bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Chinese lottery technology firm China LotSynergy Holdings (CLH) has won a nearly $200m court victory over a state-owned firm’s ongoing use of CLH’s video lottery terminals (VLT).

On Monday, the Hong Kong-listed CLH informed the markets that the People’s High Court of Beijing had issued a ruling on August 10 that awarded a CLH subsidiary “cooperation remuneration” of RMB1.36b (US$197.3m) plus interest based on a dispute over another company’s use of CLH’s VLTs following the expiration of a contract.

In 2005, CLH subsidiary Dongguan Tianyi Electronics Company Ltd (DGTY) reached a 10-year deal with Beijing China Lottery Online Technology Company Ltd (CLO) for the use of DGTY’s VLTs. The deal expired in June 2015, but CLO continued to use the 41,500 VLTs without paying DGTY the required remuneration.

It should be noted that the VLTs in question aren’t the quasi slot machines that operate in non-Asian markets, but simply permit the digital sale of welfare lottery products. Non-lottery gambling products are strictly illegal under Chinese law, with the exceptions of horseracing and casinos in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.