New York’s mobile sports betting hopes took another step closer to realization after the state senate approved their wagering legislation.

On Monday, the New York state senate okayed SB17D, which would authorize digital betting operations in the state, as well as in-stadia wagering at major sports venues, plus betting kiosks at racetracks and off-track betting parlors.

Monday’s vote was by an emphatic margin of 57-5 but the bill is believed to face a far more uncertain future from this point forward. While Assembly figures insist they have more than enough votes to ensure the bill’s passage, it’s unclear whether Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie will permit a wagering vote when there are more pressing issues to consider before the current legislative session concludes on Wednesday.

There’s also the small matter that Gov. Andrew Cuomo publicly expressed misgivings just last week about (a) the chances that a betting bill will be passed before the deadline, and (b) whether such a bill would conflict with the state constitution, which requires a voter referendum on expansion of gambling options.

The Netherlands’ gambling regulator has received 79 expressions of interest from companies seeking the country’s new online gambling licenses.

On Monday, the Kansspeautoriteit (KSA) regulatory body announced that 79 parties had filled out the online form indicating their eagerness to receive one of the new Dutch online gambling permits. The KSA has established a June 21 deadline for companies to make their intentions known.

The KSA didn’t disclose the names of the 79 early birds, although numerous members of the industry’s familiar face brigade have publicly stated their intention to apply. The KSA has already announced that it won’t be accepting actual applications until July 1, 2020 and the new regulated market isn’t likely to commence until January 1, 2021 at the earliest.

Among the prospective applicants will be Holland Casino, the state-run land-based casino monopoly whose privatization was scrapped last month when Dutch politicians decided they already had too much on their plate crafting the nuts and bolts of online gambling regulation.

Regional casino operator Eldorado Resorts has sold three of its venues to rival Century Casinos and real estate investment trust VICI Properties.

On Monday, Eldorado informed investors that it had reached a $385m deal to unload its West Virginia property Mountaineer Casino Racetrack & Resort (pictured) along with two Missouri riverboat operations – the Isle Casino Cape Girardeau and the Lady Luck Casino Caruthersville – to Century and VICI.

Assuming regulators approve, Century will pay $107m for control of the three venues’ operations while VICI will pony up $278m to acquire the casinos’ land and real estate assets. The deal requires Century to pay VICI an initial annual rent of $25m on the three properties for the first 15 years, with four five-year renewal options.

Eldorado CEO Tom Reeg called Monday’s sale announcement “consistent with our continued focus on optimizing the results from our regional gaming platform, generating growth through strategic acquisitions and realizing value through sales.”

Germany has launched a new campaign against online casino payment processors following this spring’s approval of a new temporary federal gambling treaty.

On Monday, Boris Pistorius, Minister of the Interior and Sport in the German state of Lower Saxony, announced that the state government had informed an unidentified international payment processor to immediately suspend its relationships with internationally licensed online casino operators targeting German customers.

Pistorius added that his office was “signalling and expect pressure on other payment service providers” to observe the federal gambling treaty’s requirement to “refrain from payments in connection with unauthorized gambling.” Some processors have already taken these steps, which Pistorius held up as evidence that “an effective approach is quite possible.”

Earlier this spring, a German court ruled that local financial institutions were responsible for ensuring that their operations didn’t facilitate illegal gambling transactions. This followed a 2018 ruling in which a German bank was told it couldn’t compel a reluctant gambler to pay charges he’d incurred funding wagers with an internationally licensed online casino.

Ninja Casino‘s parent company has had its Swedish online gambling licenses revoked after the regulator found the company’s social responsibility and anti-money-laundering (AML) measures to be inadequate.

On Monday, Sweden’s Spelinspektionen regulatory body announced that it had ordered the immediate revocation of the online casino and sports betting licenses of SafeEnt Ltd, a subsidiary of Sweden-based Global Gaming. The regulator took the unprecedented step after discovering “serious deficiencies in the company’s operations, including applicable gaming responsibility and measures against money laundering.”

Spelinspektionen said SafeEnt, whose brands include the popular Ninja Casino, had “violated several of the most central parts of the game law,” including allowing customers to exceed their online deposit limits and failing to intervene when customers demonstrated obvious signs of problem gambling behavior.

In addition, Spelinspektionen said it found “serious and systematic shortcomings” in SafeEnt’s AML and terrorist financing measures. SafeEnt also violated Sweden’s increasingly strict rules regarding bonus offers and to have offered lottery products that weren’t covered under the company’s local licenses.

Newcomers to sports betting, and particularly daily fantasy sports (DFS), could be forgiven for not knowing much about the history of FanDuel and DraftKings. The two operators have recently become respected partners of giant corporations like Disney and have led the sports betting revolution in the U.S.

One lawsuit is looking to remind everyone that the two sites have a history of controversy, and help their customers win back some of the money lost on their platforms. Troxel Law have put up the website dailyfantasysportsclaim.com, specifically looking for customers who have lost funds on the two sites since January 1, 2015.

The site spells out exactly why they believe there’s a case to be made against FanDuel and DraftKings, and they believe it’s a case of false advertising:

“According to the lawsuits, FanDuel told its investors that only the top 0.1% of users actually win money, and only a tiny minority of DraftKings players won money over the long term.

Shareholders of online gambling technology company GAN have given their approval to see the company delisted from the Euronext Growth trading platform. GAN has been floated on the exchange since November 2013, but will be removed as of 7 AM local time this Wednesday. The move comes as the company has seen no trading of its stock on the Dublin-based platform.

According to The Times media outlet in the UK, GAN shareholders held their annual meeting in London last week, approving the suggestion that the company be delisted. Dermoot Smurfit, GAN’s CEO, explained that there was “no trading going on” and that staying on the market was a “waste of time and energy and administrative overhead.”

There may be more to the decision than that, however. A few months ago, it was announced that the company could possibly be looking to sell the business, or that it could be considering a listing on a stock exchange in the US.

GAN has been around since 2002. It creates and distributes Internet gaming and betting services, software and content to business-to-business customers in the US and across Europe, and has seen revenue growth of over 100% since the US Supreme Court defeated the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) in May of last year. In absence of any interest on the Ireland-based exchange, and huge potential in the US and other recently opened markets in Europe, a move to another exchange would be strategically advantageous.