Five veteran Lottery employees on Thursday demanded that senior department executives resign amid investigations into hiring practices and alleged misconduct on a work-related trip two years ago.California, Administration, Complaints, Government, Ethics, Director
Kenya’s betting operators are popping the champagne corks after the government approved a significant reduction in their recently hiked betting taxes.
On Friday, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta announced that he’d affixed his signature to the Finance Bill 2018 following its passage in what local media described as a “chaotic” session of Parliament on Thursday.
The Finance Bill makes a number of significant changes to the nation’s governance, but for our purposes, the primary item is the reduction of betting operators’ tax rate from 35% of gross gambling revenue to 15%, while imposing a new 20% tax on bettors’ winnings.
The government claims the new split tax regime will still generate SH30b (US$297m) per year for the government’s coffers but opposition MPs spent a good portion of Thursday’s session hurling insults at National Assembly Majority Leader Aden Duale, one of the prime movers in pushing for the gambling tax reduction.
Erkut Yilmaz took a massive chip lead into Friday’s WPT Borgata Poker Open final table. He has an opportunity to win his first major poker tournament and $575,000. Just six […]
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Track owner Churchill Downs Incorporated has announced plans for a $5 million capital investment that will expand the Starting Gate Suites through the construction of a new 20,000-square-foot rooftop garden.
Team Valor International has acquired The Black Album (FR), recent winner of the group 3 Prix La Rochette at ParisLongchamp, and will point him to the grade 1, $1-million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Nov. 2 at Churchill Downs.
Gambling industry professionals returned to the Kensington Olympia today to continue their journey with SBC for Betting on Sports week 2018. The second day of the conference was busy and buzzing on the expo floor with numerous sessions taking place in five different conference rooms.
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The American Gaming Association (AGA) has released figures for the year 2017, showing that the gambling industry contributed $261.4 billion in business sales to the U.S. economy in 2017, a 9.5% increase from 2014.
According to the AGA, which partnered with Oxford Economics in crafting the report, the amount of $261.4 billion made for $40.8 billion in federal, state and local taxes, including $10.7 billion of gambling taxes.
“The $40.8 billion of tax revenues supported by the gaming [industry] represents an injection into public budgets that pays for a range of services including public safety, hospitals and schools. In fact, total tax revenues… generated by the gaming industry are enough to pay for the salaries of approximately 692,000 teachers,” the report read.
Sara Slane, AGA senior vice-president of public affairs, said, “Since our last study in 2014, casino gaming has expanded into new markets, offered innovative new entertainment options and enhanced its position as a key contributor to local, state and federal economies.”
The state of New Jersey will continue overseeing the fiscal recovery of Atlantic City until 2021, the Office of the Governor announced.
Gov. Phil Murphy has unveiled the report ‘Building a foundation for a shared prosperity,’ submitted to his office by Special Counsel James E. Johnson, which outlines various proposals to be undertaken before control of the city is given back to the local government.
“Atlantic City has a number of challenges that will only be resolved with significant direction from and partnership with the State,” the report read.
In May 2016, when Chris Christie was still governor, the Municipal Stabilization and Recovery Act (MSRA) was passed by the state legislature to remedy the bankruptcy faced by Atlantic City, whose casinos’ gross gaming revenue (GGR) had declined by 7.5% annually from 2006 to 2014, with some casinos closing down. With the legislation, a five-year period was given for the state’s takeover of local powers.
The campaign creative developed by Clarion Gaming in support of the 2019 edition of ICE London (5-7 February, ExCeL London, UK) celebrates the genius of the international gaming industry which is widely recognised as one of the world economy’s earliest adopters, and indeed developers, of new technology. The Clarion marketing team has represented a series of inventions that have changed the world as illustrations of the scale of game changing genius found on the 45,500 sqm (net) of the show floor at ICE London, the world’s biggest gaming exhibition. The series of #spiritofgenius adverts feature iconoclastic inventions encompassing braille to the bar code, abstract art to applied mathematics and the printing press to the contraceptive pill.
Kate Chambers, Managing Director of Clarion Gaming, stated: “We thought it was about time that someone started banging the drum on behalf of an industry that has consistently been among the very first to embrace new technology and is among the most creative sectors anywhere in the world, employing the most talented individuals and the brightest minds. With close to 600 exhibitors from 60+ nations using ICE London to unveil their very latest products, ICE London is the very best place to experience the spirit of genius that drives the totality of the gaming experience.”
She added: “While ICE London is the biggest and most international gaming technology event, the team recognises that we have to earn the attendance of every exhibitor and every visitor who in 2018 travelled to London from a record breaking 153 nations. We achieve this by investing in our marketing and investing in the way in which we engage with our international stakeholders. The #spiritofgenius campaign will be the most extensive in the history of the ICE brand, supported by above- and below-the-line spend across a multitude of media channels.”
The unique number of visitors attending ICE London 2018 was confirmed as a record 33,536, an 11 percent increase on 2017 and a landmark which constituted the event’s seventh consecutive year of growth. Despite occupying an additional hall at ExCeL London, density increased year-on-year, with the average number of visitors per stand up 17 percent and the number of visitors per square metre up 12 percent. The ICE London brand also demonstrated its unique ability to engage with gaming professionals based throughout the world, with the exhibition experiencing a surge of visitors from key growth regions, notably North America (+33 percent), Africa (+23 percent) and South East Asia (+18 percent).
Asia Gaming Brief and 200 gaming professionals brave the super typhoon for another round of the highly anticipated Asia gaming social event, the Mid-autumn Festival Networking Social.
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Melco International has announced that it plans on opening three of its satellite casino in Cyprus sometime before the end of this year. Those three – in Nicosia, Paphos and Larnaca – will later be followed by a fourth satellite casino in Ayia Napa, which should be open sometime in the spring of next year.
Melco has been moving on the satellite casinos since this past summer when it announced that it had joined forces with a local company to open a satellite casino in Larnaka International Airport on the southern coast of the Mediterranean island nation. That initial satellite casino is expected to have around 50 gaming machines.
That endeavor is made possible through a Melco-led consortium called Integrated Casino Resorts Cyprus Ltd. (ICR Cyprus). ICR Cyprus was issued a 30-year casino license in June of last year by the country’s government that authorized the Larnaka casino, as well as the additional four satellite casinos. The consortium is composed of Melco, which owns a 35.37% stake, Hard Rock International and a local company, Cyprus Phasouri (Zakaki) Ltd.
This past June, ICR Cyprus opened a temporary casino, the C2, in the southern city of Limassol. That casino is designed to give players a taste of what’s to come when Melco launches its City of Dreams Mediterranean (CODM) casino resort. C2 will stay open for three more years and is scheduled to close when CODM is completed in 2021.
Beginning September 28, Americas Cardroom (ACR) will be in Costa Rica. It’s just a little weekend getaway, but the US-facing poker site will host a poker live cash game for a few of the site’s lucky winners. The game, a Cage Event, has a buy-in of $5,250 and the weekend party will wrap up on October 1.
The Cage Event will run for a total of 12 hours, split into four blind levels of three hours each. Six hours will be played on September 28 and the other six on September 29. No late registrations or re-entries are permitted and all players must remain until the end of the action, unless they bust. When the clock runs out, all chips held by each player can be redeemed for cash. The poker game will be held at the Taormina Hotel in San Jose.
ACR posted about the event on Twitter, saying, “Are you brave enough to step into The Live Cage? Cards are in the air on September 28th. You can win your way to Costa Rica this Sunday through a $55 satellite where three $8,000 packages are at stake.”
The poker portal has been giving away prize packages worth $8,000 to participate in the game. Since January, it has rewarded a player every Sunday with a package for various Cage Events and will continue to hand them out until the last event is held in December. The packages are given to those players who take down the $55 Beast and Sit & Crush Cage Live satellite event, which are held each Sunday at 6 PM Eastern Time. Sit & Crush entry is won through ACR’s leaderboard races for Sit & Crush and The Beast.
The operator of India’s leading online rummy portal, RummyCircle, is about to get into gambling. According to an exclusive release with the gambling media outlet Glaws, Play Games 24×7 Pvt. Ltd. Mumbai, also known simply as Play Games, is expected to introduce a new website in the next couple of days that will offer real-money gambling on international horseracing.
Turfbets.com is designed to provide customers in India with a horserace betting experience that is unparalleled. It will offer races that take place in the UK, France and the US and the site is capable of streaming hundreds of races each day through its exclusive video player.
The site will also allow users to place bets on the live races and provide live-video streaming and historical data for each horse, as well as other statistics associated with the race. If preparations go as planned, the site will offer its services initially to a closed group of 1,000 within the next couple of days and then open to more customers.
Unfortunately, there are a couple of restrictions. Since Assam, Odisha and Telangana prohibit all games of skill where money is involved, residents in those states are not permitted to participate in any online horse races for prizes. Other states, however, might be more lenient.
The Landmark Macau, a casino-hotel on the Macau peninsula close to Macau Fisherman’s Wharf, is no more. Not in name, at least. It is now officially known as the New Orient Landmark Hotel. The change in name comes after the casino-hotel was sold this past April by Macau Legend Development to an indirect subsidiary of Macau Legend, New Macau Landmark Management Ltd.
Media outlet GGRAsia reported on the name change, adding that it conducted a site inspection on Wednesday. That inspection didn’t reveal any changes in the venue’s Pharaoh’s Palace Casino, which will still be managed by Macau Legend under the license of SJM Holdings Ltd.
GGRAsia added that it had attempted to talk to Chong Sio Kin, a Macau property investor who is now the majority owner of the property, but was unsuccessful. Chong is also the chairman of New Orient Group, a Macau property development firm and president of the board of the Macau General Association of Real Estate. His purchase reportedly gave him 58% of the shares of Macau Legend.
The transfer of the hotel came after its CEO, David Chow Kam Fai, and a wholly-owned Macau Legend group sold 100% of their equity to New Macau Landmark. The deal was initially expected to be completed during the first quarter of the year, but was delayed as Macau Legend needed more time to fulfill certain unspecified conditions of the sale.
Just over two weeks remain until the start of the 2018 WSOP Europe (WSOPE). The series of events will get underway on October 9 and run until November 2 at King’s Casino in Rozvadov, Czech Republic, the casino that has become synonymous with major European poker tournaments. There will be a total of ten gold bracelets to be awarded, compared to the 78 that were won this past summer at the WSOP Las Vegas series.
If players aren’t interested in a little gold bling, perhaps the prize pool will be a better enticement. The WSOPE offers a total guarantee of €13 million (US$15.3 million) across the events. The main event, a €10,300 (US$12,132) NLHE tournament, has €5 million (US$5.88 million) up for grabs.
Here’s a look at the schedule:
Date
PT and K Stable’s lightly raced Still There is set to contend with a field of six other seasoned older fillies and mares in the $300,000 Gallant Bloom Handicap (G2) Sept. 23 at Belmont Park to prove her recent grade 1 effort was no fluke.
Bullish trade continued to fuel the Keeneland September Yearling Sale Sept. 20 as spirited bidding led to double-digit increases in key metrics, mirroring a trend seen since the sale started Sept. 10.
The 2018-19 Championship Meet stakes schedule at Gulfstream Park will feature a record 105 stakes worth a record $29.079 million in purses.
Stuart Janney III’s grade 3-winning homebred My Impression returns to stakes company looking to give her connections a third straight victory in the All Along, presented by Blackwell Real Estate, Saturday at Laurel Park.
A Union Rags colt purchased by agent Ben Glass on behalf of Gary and Mary West for $250,000 was the top-priced horse sold during the Sept. 20 session of the Keeneland September Yearling Sale.