Monthly Archives: September 2018

Industry experts gather for KPMG eGaming Summit

KPMG has announced a packed programme for its 2018 Isle of Man eGaming Summit, which this year will be held at the newly-opened conference rooms at COMIS Hotel at Mount Murray on Thursday 20th September.

Based around the theme of “Raising Standards Together”, the event will feature leading industry figures who will discuss their latest thinking on digital and legislative developments, M&A, diversity, innovation and customer protection. This will be the ninth Isle of Man eSummit, which forms part of a highly respected series of annual events that has in recent years has been extended to Malta and Gibraltar, and it is expected to attract some 250-300 delegates.

This year’s eSummit will be opened by Isle of Man Chief Minister Howard Quayle whose address will be followed by a presentation by the Isle of Man Government’s digital leadership team. They will outline their strategy and planned changes to legislation to support the Island’s future as a digital destination with a focus on the impact for the eGaming sector. This session will also include views from long-standing residents involved in the sector as well as some new arrivals who have chosen to make the Isle of Man their base.

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) will then introduce the core theme for the day on ‘Raising Standards Together’, which will look at how the sector can collaborate on innovation, diversity and customer protection to enhance the performance and reputation of all operators.

Betting on Sports to bring expert insights in the emerging US betting markets

The Sports Betting Hall of Fame recognises those people who have made an outstanding contribution to the betting and gaming industry over their careers.

This year’s Hall of Famers will be recognised as part of the Betting on Sports Week with the evening event taking place at the prestigious National History Museum on the evening of Thursday 20 September.

Betting on Sports Week delegates are all invited to this magnificent event, but if you for some reason cannot attend Betting on Sports during the day or want to invite your colleagues, there is still a chance for this.

You can book tickets at £150 each for this special evening event, which includes:

Fruits Go Bananas fruity gaming experience goes live in casinos from today

Tuesday, September 11; 2018, Malta – Fruits Go Bananas™ has added a modern twist to traditional fruits games and has been the target of a number of operators since being showcased at iGB Live! earlier in the year. Fruits Go Bananas™ is a great adventure with a bunch of fruity characters that has just gone live with a number of leading casinos including Volt Casino, 1xbet, Vbet and Vivarobet.

Award-winning Wazdan is a company generating a lot of interest in the slots industry, a brand that is using its passion for games to create a whole new generation of slots games driven by unique technologies.

Fruits Go Bananas™ is one of those online slots that deliver loads of fun thanks to its immersive gaming experience achieved through carefully crafted characters an amusing theme, passionately rendered graphics, high-quality ambient sound effects and rewarding special features. Fruits Go Bananas™ is a great summer adventure with a group of funny fruits having fun on a luxury cruiser that are here to help players and operators win!

Fruits Go Bananas™ is a 5-reel, 5-payline slot offering Wilds with a 2x mutiplier, Scatters, up to 30 Free Spins and two amazing Random Wild Features that not only provide players with big wins, but also make them laugh at funny pineapples and bananas goofing around backed by Wazdan’s ground-breaking technology platform which provide operators with the ability to activate multiple features designed to enhance customer experience and engagement, improve retention, encourage extended play and produce higher yield.

Russian hacker to face a US federal judge over JP Morgan attacks

A Russian hacker has been shipped off to the US to face a judge. 35-year-old Andrei Tyurin, who allegedly conducted a series of hacks against JP Morgan and other companies, was arrested in Georgia and extradited to the US following a request by the US government. His actions reportedly affected more than 100 million customers.

Working with several co-conspirators, including Joshua Samuel Aaron, Gery Shalon, Ziv Orenstein and an unidentified fifth person, Tyurin assisted in a large hacking campaign of a number of companies. One of the attacks has been called the largest-ever theft of customer data from a financial institution in the US. That attack saw 83 million JP Morgan customers have their data stolen in 2014. Other targets were Scottrade, E*Trade Financial and Dow Jones & Co.

After obtaining the information, which ran from 2012 to 2015, the criminals used it to participate in a number of activities, including a pump-and-dump scheme that saw them make millions of dollars by selling penny stocks and artificially raising the stocks’ prices.

According to a statement by the Department of Justice, “In addition to the US financial sector hacks, Tyurin also conducted cyber-attacks against numerous US and foreign companies in furtherance of various criminal enterprises operated by Shalon and his co-conspirators, including unlawful internet gambling businesses and international payment processors.

Macau casino stocks slip on Deutsche Bank analysis

Yesterday, Deutsche Bank AG issued an update on the year-on-year growth outlook for Macau’s gross gaming revenue (GGR), cutting next year’s expectation significantly. While previous predictions had put the city’s 2019 GGR at 11%, it now sits at only 4%.

Deutsche Bank indicated that the update stems from concerns over the VIP gambling segment. It added that Macau could be at the beginning of a downward earnings cycle and has recommended a “sell” on two of the area’s casino operators, SJM Holdings and Galaxy Entertainment Group.

According to analysts, the “current downcycle is similar to the late-2011 to mid-2012 slowdown when GGR growth sharply decelerated to 6 percent year-on-year from 20 percent year-on-year.”

Five of the six Macau operators who are listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange immediately saw a substantial increase in their stocks sales. Stock prices dropped 7.42% for MGM China and Wynn Macau saw its price slip by 3.28%. SJM Holdings’ stock price fell 6.44%, while Galaxy’s shrunk by 5.69%.

Facial recognition technology could come to Macau

If Leong Sun Iok has his way, facial recognition could soon come to Macau’s casinos. The Macau legislator is pushing for enhanced security at area casinos and hotels and believes that facial recognition technology is the way to go.

On September 7, Leong sent a letter to the Macau government in which he detailed an increase in reported crimes in the city. He stated that, during the first six months of the year, casino robbery reports were up by 50% year-on-year according to data that was made available by the Office of the Secretary for Security.

During the first half of last year, only six robberies on Macau hotel premises were reported. This year, during the same period, that number had jumped to 13. A robbery is generally defined as an act of theft involving violence or the threat of violence.

Despite Leong’s assertions, there is other evidence to support the belief that crime is actually declining. Gaming-related crimes, according to the government, has shrunk by 3% year-on-year to 840 cases.

888Poker suffer DDoS attacks ahead of XL Eclipse Series

The men and women wearing fsociety masks were at it again this week, this time bombarding 888Poker with a series of Distributed Denial of Service attacks, upsetting the online giant days before they roll out their XL Eclipse Series. 

I’ve just turned the last page on a book of poems written by a man during the final days of his death. It makes me feel sadder than a cane sitting in a headmaster’s cupboard in 1987 and pushes my foot down on the accelerator.

I have shit to do before I die.

I need to get it done.

Superbet delays launch of Poland-facing online sportsbook

Romanian gambling operator Superbet is pushing back its plans to launch its Polish-facing online sportsbook.

Poland’s punters will have to wait a while longer for Superbet, which received its Polish land-based betting license last October, to join the locally regulated market’s extremely short list of approved online betting options.

Superbet had vowed to take its Polish action online sometime in Q3 but with less than one month to go until that window closes, Superbet Polska CEO Aleš Dobeš told Polish gambling affiliate E-PLAYBET that the online launch was now targeted for sometime in Q4, but most definitely by 2019.

Dobeš claimed that his company was engaged in “intensive work” on the online product, but that it still required properly rigorous testing, and so the relevant documents wouldn’t be submitted to Poland’s Ministry of Finance until Superbet was sure the product was up to the challenge.

College Football week 3 betting preview

Among the Power 5 conferences, the Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 all play nine conference games. That means generally speaking Week 3 of the season is the last non-conference game for most of those schools in the regular season.

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

This will also be the last week that Ohio State is without suspended head coach Urban Meyer on gameday as the No. 4 Buckeyes face No. 15 TCU from AT&T Stadium outside Dallas. Meyer has been able to coach the team at practice since after Week 1. He hasn’t been missed much yet as OSU have destroyed lightweights Oregon State and Rutgers. The Buckeyes are -13 against the Frogs, and Ohio State has covered six of eight vs. Big 12 foes.

Another dominant team in the early going has been No. 5 Oklahoma, but things should get a bit tougher on Saturday as the Sooners open Big 12 play at Iowa State. OU is -18 even though the Cyclones handed Oklahoma its only regular-season loss last year, 38-31 in Norman in a huge upset. OU is on a 16-game road winning streak and has won those by an average of nearly 22 points.

Slot machine ‘calorie labels’ cause problem gamblers to spend more

Ontario’s provincial gambling monopoly has tested ‘calorie labels’ on its casinos’ slot machines as a way to help consumers be aware of exactly what it is they’re consuming.

On Tuesday, the Waterloo Region Record reported on two University of Waterloo (UW) professors who created the equivalent of nutritional labeling for slot machines to educate gamblers on how the machines worked and hopefully reduce the prevalence of problem gambling behavior.

UW professor Kevin Harrigan says his mission is to “spread the word about how [slot machines] were designed,” in particular their use of lights and sounds to disguise losing spins as wins, as well as the increased use of the ‘near-miss’ phenomenon, in which the bars or icons almost line up to form a jackpot but not quite, leaving some players thinking they’re more likely to win on subsequent spins.

Working with his UW colleague Dan Brown, Harrigan created a slots version of the ‘Facts Up Front’ nutritional labels that offer US consumers the unvarnished truth of how much salt, sugar and fat they’re consuming.