UK-listed gambling operator GVC Holdings is shutting down its Ladbrokes Coral office in Tel Aviv, putting some 140 jobs at risk.

On Tuesday, eGaming Review reported that GVC planned to shutter its Ladbrokes Coral office in Tel Aviv as part of a marketing reshuffle. The news was confirmed Wednesday by Israeli technology news outlet Calcalist, which revealed that the Tel Aviv office would close by the end of this year.

Calcalist reported that Ladbrokes Coral’s 140 Tel Aviv staffers will be offered relocation opportunities at the company’s other global offices, but sufficient redundancies are a distinct possibility. The office’s marketing positions are being transferred to Gibraltar while other tech positions will now be handled in Hyderabad, India.

Ladbrokes Coral’s Tel Aviv office had suggested only last year that it planned to hire up to 200 local staff. A GVC spokesperson said the company was committed to provide soon-to-be-redundant staffers with “fair and compassionate treatment” and assistance in transitioning to their next career opportunity.

Singapore’s two casinos have been given the green light for major expansion but also imposed higher taxes on gambling revenue and boosted casino entry levies by 50%.

On Wednesday, Singapore’s government announced plans to extend the exclusivity period granted to the city-state’s two integrated resorts (IR), Las Vegas Sands’ Marina Bay Sands (MBS) and Genting Singapore’s Resorts World Sentosa (RWS). The two IRs will now have the market all to themselves until at least 2030.

The two IRs have also been granted permission to expand their gaming floors beyond their current 15k-square-meters apiece. MBS has been okayed to expand its Approved Gaming Area (AGA) by an additional 2k-square-meters, on which it can place an additional 1k gaming machines. RWS was granted a smaller expansion, an additional 500-square-meters to accommodate another 800 machines.

The government said it was granting these perks to the IR operators based on their “substantial investment” to date and to ensure “business certainty” for their operations going forward. On top of the total S$15b (US$11.1b) the two operators initially invested to build their properties, they have now committed an additional S$9b ($6.65b) toward non-gaming amenities to boost tourism.

The gravy train has ground to a halt for Paradise Co Ltd., the South Korea foreigner-only casino operator. In an April 3 filing, they reported revenues dropped 0.9% year over year in March.

In total, they brought in KRW50.63 billion ($44.6 million), compared to a slightly healthier KRW51.07 billion ($45 million) in March 2018. The decline was mostly due to machine games, which reduced 11.3%, while table games remained even with 2018.

The company didn’t provide any rationale for the decrease. Considering it’s the first time in months that they’ve seen a decrease, they might not have been prepared to explain themselves. It could very well be though that the weekend fire that shut down their Paradise City hotel for an afternoon could have made the difference between an increase and a decrease in their bottom line for the period.

Before this decline, Paradise Co looked unbeatable. It ended 2018 very strong, and rumbled to a 28.5% increase for the month of February.

Heavy handed regulation could be having an unintended effect on the gambling industry. This was the opinion given by Bepi Pezzulli, general counsel of SKS365, Italy’s biggest sports book, in comments made to local Italian media and reported on by SBC News.

Italy’s political leadership, currently run by a coalition named Lega-5Star, has placed a blanket ban on gambling advertising and sponsorships, which started in January, and will sunset existing deals by the end of June.

Pezzulli said that ban was already impacting operations, and would have negative impact’s the government did not foresee. He told the press:

“The Italian political environment is unfavourable to the gaming industry, especially due to its mistaken communication strategy. There are many issues that have been overlooked such as lower league sports clubs and organisations living on sponsorships alone. The execution of the Decree has been poor on this aspect. It is of note that the regulated industry forms a protection against illegality.”

In the state known for peaches and peanuts, gambling hasn’t always been a popular subject. That has been changing, though, as Georgia lawmakers have been testing the waters to gauge public reception. A bill is being considered to allow sports gambling in the state and a push is now on to bring horseracing and casino gambling into the mix, as well.

A bill that had sought to allow horseracing in Georgia stalled in the Senate recently, so lawmakers decided to take a different approach. Earlier this week, they decided to form a committee to study gambling in order to develop a plan that will appease both lawmakers and state residents.

Senate Resolution 367 authorizes a panel of 11 lawmakers, many of whom are in the upper echelon of Georgia’s Senate, to meet over the summer and discuss horseracing and casino gambling. The bill was authored by Senator Brandon Beach and co-authored by four other lawmakers and the committee would only be in place until December 1 of this year.

Beach has been pushing for expanded gambling in the Peach State and found a small victory earlier this year when a bill that would have allowed as many as three horseracing facilities made it past a Senate Panel. However, it died shortly after.

For 2018, Travellers International Hotel Group, the owner and operator of Resorts World Manila in the Philippines, recorded a profit of $26.6 million, almost 400% higher than a year earlier. Part of this gain came from an insurance payout stemming from an arson and robbery from June 2017 that amounted to $32.59 million, meaning the company would have experienced a loss if it weren’t for the payout. Because of this, Japanese brokerage Nomura has revised its EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) for Travellers for both this year and for 2020.

The EBITDA is now expected to be lower than previously forecast. Nomura analyst Thomas Earl Huang indicated that the company’s revenues “surprised on the upside” by increasing 9% year-on-year, but that “EBITDA margin compression (-7.2 percentage points) overpowered this upside surprise.” In addition, earnings per share forecasts have been reduced by 39% for both financial years.

Travellers took in revenue of $383.711 million, 17% higher than the $328.14 million seen a year earlier. This was boosted by the opening of the first gaming floor at Grand Wing, a new addition to Resorts World Manila. The Grand Wing added 55 gaming tables and 441 slot machines to the resort’s portfolio, but the 17% increase was “outstripped by ramping costs,” according to Nomura.

Huang added, “Opex [operational expenditure] ex-depreciation jumped in fiscal-year 2018 equating to 89 percent of revenues versus 81 percent the year prior owing to front-loaded costs. We thus expect EBITDA margin recovery to only begin after the second gaming floor of the Grand Wing comes on-stream.”

Puerto Rico, a U.S.-controlled territory in the Caribbean, could soon begin to offer sports gambling. A bill has been drafted that would allow both in-person and online wagers and, if approved, would also open the doors for gambling on fantasy sports and eSports.

According to an article by the media outlet Caribbean Business, Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Roselló announced the bill this past Monday. It was drafted by Representative Nestor Alonso Vega, the chairman of the House Tourism Committee, and Roselló believes that legalized sports gambling could attract anywhere from $44 million to $66 million in taxes each year.

The bill seeks to create a new Gaming Commission that would be responsible for creating the regulations for the sports gambling industry and for issuing licenses to operators. That commission would be composed of seven individuals from the public and private sectors and would work closely with the Financial Institutions Commissioner’s Office, which would be in charge of overseeing the market.

According to Roselló, “This industry has the potential to convert Puerto Rico into a jurisdiction in the vanguard of allowing the establishment of this new model, which will have a positive effect on our economy. We have worked on aggressive legislation that aspires at being able to market the island at the international and national levels as an attractive destination for the millions of people who bet on sports events.”

The outlook for gross gaming revenue (GGR) in Macau this month is a little bleak. According to the four major brokerages covering the region, GGR is going to shrink anywhere between 2%-8%. However, there is some good news, as the general opinion is that revenue will see growth later this year.

2018 started strong for GGR in Macau and stayed that way through the first half of the year. As the trade war between the U.S. and China heated up, that growth waned in the latter half and spilled over into early 2019. If things go well, a better Chinese economy this year could push Macau GGR back up.

This past Monday, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ, for its Portuguese acronym) indicated GGR in March was down 0.4% year-on-year. The aggregate decline for 2019 to date is now 0.5%, or $9.46 billion.

This decline led Grant Govertsen of Union Gaming to assert, “As comps [comparisons] begin to ease this spring we are looking for growth to return as of May and generally maintain in the mid-single digits.” He added that GGR for this month will be 2.8% lower than it was in April 2018.