A bipartisan bill has been submitted to the Connecticut Senate that would allow sports betting at casinos located in the state.

While still subject to modifications along the way, the bill, with current working number of LCO 578, provides exclusive rights to operate sportsbooks to casinos, in particular the Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods located in Montville, which the bill’s author state Senator Cathy Osten represents.

According to a press release, online bets for sports events will also be permitted, but will also have to be made through the casinos.

Osten noted that nearby states Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware are already offering legal sports betting. “Connecticut needs to play catch-up with surrounding states if we’re serious about modernizing our existing gaming industry. Fortunately, we can do that with a relatively simple regulatory fix,” she said.

Online lottery betting operator Lottoland has thrown a spanner into the works of rival ZEAL Network’s plan to (re)acquire lottery broker Lotto24 AG.

In November, the London-based ZEAL announced an all-share voluntary takeover offer for Lotto24, a former ZEAL subsidiary that was spun-off from the mothership in 2012. Assuming Lotto24 shareholders went for it, ZEAL envisioned sealing the deal in the first half of 2019.

On Monday night, Lottoland CEO Nigel Birrell issued a public letter to ZEAL’s CEO Helmut Becker, arguing that ZEAL’s bid to reacquire Lotto24 “makes no strategic or economic sense.” As an alternative, Birrell said Lottoland planned to “make an offer for the purchase of certain assets” of ZEAL, promising to publish full details of this offer by the end of the month.

Birrell, who identified himself as a ZEAL shareholder, laid out a nine-point argument detailing his objections, including his belief that Lotto24 is wildly overvalued. Birrell also challenged whether the Lotto24 takeover was intended to benefit “certain shareholders” at the expense of ZEAL’s rank-and-file shareholders.

Sweden’s gambling regulator says 10k adults have formally blocked themselves from accessing the country’s new online gambling licensees.

On Tuesday, the Spelinspektionen regulatory body (formerly Lotteriinspektionen) announced that 10k Swedish adults had registered with Spelpaus.se, the new national gambling self-exclusion registry that took effect on January 1 alongside the new regulated online gambling market.

In October, the regulator first unveiled its plans for the new Spelpaus program, which must be checked by all Swedish-licensed online gambling operators before sending any marketing to or accepting any wagers from Swedish customers. All operators must clearly feature a link to the Spelpaus site on their websites.

Spelinspektionen says the majority of the Spelpaus registrants to date have opted for total exclusion, although there are options for ‘time outs’ of anywhere from one to six months. Regulatory spokesperson Anders Sims said social media mentions showed a high approval rate for the introduction of the Spelpaus program.

Lee Davy sits down with the ‘Norm Macdonald Has a Show’ star of the same name during the PokerStars Player’s No-Limit Hold’em Championship in the Bahamas where they talk about his nervousness before going on stage, businessmen pulling prostitutes, and Tom Jones’ love of sniffing grandmas knickers.

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

New York arbitrators have ruled that the Seneca Nation of Indians must resume paying the state a cut of slots revenue from its three tribal casino operations.

On Tuesday, a three-member arbitration panel voted 2-1 in favor of New York State, ruling that the Senecas were wrong to withhold the state’s 25% share of slots revenue from the tribal casinos in Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Salamanca.

In April 2017, the Senecas began withholding the payments, which previously amounted to around $110m per year. The Senecas claimed that their gaming compact with the state contained no language compelling the tribe to continue making the payments beyond the length of the compact’s 14-year initial term.

However, many observers suspected that the Senecas were more interested in expressing their displeasure with the state’s 2015 decision to issue new commercial casino licenses, including one to the del Lago Resort & Casino in Seneca county, just outside the Senecas’ “exclusive” casino territory. The del Lago opened two months before the Senecas announced their intention to stop its payments to the state.

Detroit’s three commercial casinos reported record gaming revenue in 2018, although only two properties beat their personal best numbers.

On Tuesday, the Michigan Gaming Control Board released its annual gaming revenue figures for 2018, during which Detroit’s three commercial gaming venues generated a combined $1.44b in revenue, $40m higher than 2017’s result and $20m higher than the previous record of $1.42b set in 2011.

Slots accounted for $1.17b (81%) of 2018’s record haul, with the remaining $272m coming from table games. The casinos paid the state $117m in gaming taxes in 2018, while the city of Detroit earned $183m through gaming taxes and development agreement payments.

The three casinos closed out 2018 with revenue of just under $127.5m in December, 9.7% higher than the same month last year. December’s haul was the second-best monthly total this year, behind only the $138.6m the casinos earned in March.