Bulgaria’s gambling regulator has suspended the license of bookmaker Eurofootball after concluding that the operator had failed to pay its necessary taxes to the state.

On Wednesday, Bulgaria’s State Gambling Commission (SGC) announced the temporary revocation of the sports and race betting licenses issued to Eurofootball Ltd. The revocation will last a minimum of three months, within which the SGC says Eurofootball must “take action to end the violations.”

Said violations involve Eurofootball’s apparent reluctance to pay taxes on its gambling revenue. The SGC claims that the company owes the state around BGN329m (US$182m) in unpaid taxes based on the company’s revenue over a five-year period ending in December 2019.

Eurofootball was among the Bulgarian gambling companies owned by Vasil Bozhkov, who was indicted in January on criminal charges including extortion and attempted bribery. Bozhkov, who was detained in the United Arab Emirates in early February, has denied any wrongdoing while fighting Bulgaria’s efforts to extradite him to face the music.

Bulgaria’s gambling regulator has suspended the license of bookmaker Eurofootball after concluding that the operator had failed to pay its necessary taxes to the state.

On Wednesday, Bulgaria’s State Gambling Commission (SGC) announced the temporary revocation of the sports and race betting licenses issued to Eurofootball Ltd. The revocation will last a minimum of three months, within which the SGC says Eurofootball must “take action to end the violations.”

Said violations involve Eurofootball’s apparent reluctance to pay taxes on its gambling revenue. The SGC claims that the company owes the state around BGN329m (US$182m) in unpaid taxes based on the company’s revenue over a five-year period ending in December 2019.

Eurofootball was among the Bulgarian gambling companies owned by Vasil Bozhkov, who was indicted in January on criminal charges including extortion and attempted bribery. Bozhkov, who was detained in the United Arab Emirates in early February, has denied any wrongdoing while fighting Bulgaria’s efforts to extradite him to face the music.

In the fast moving world of gambling, sometimes you might miss news that could be important to you. To make sure you’re all caught up on gaming industry news, be it online or brick and mortar, we’re rounding up the some of the announcements and partnerships from the last week that you might have missed.

Clarion Gaming MD, Kate Chambers, confirms postponement of ICE North America

Kate Chambers, Managing Director of Clarion Gaming, has confirmed the postponement of ICE North America, which was due to take place on May 13-14, 2020. It will now be hosted in Spring 2021, with a date to be announced shortly. More information will also be made available regarding ICE Asia and iGB Live! shortly.

SiGMA Malta confirms 5 Star iGaming Media as an Official Media Partner

The World Poker Tour is one of the oldest and must trusted names in all of poker. In fact, it’s really the first major live tour name that truly went around the world, and along with the World Series of Poker, has done more than any other brand to grow the game.

It’s fitting, then, that in this era of Coronavirus, the World Poker Tour is heading online to provide poker players with the ultimate poker event with a big guaranteed prizepool and more tournaments than you could shake Vince Van Patten at.

Taking place between the dates of May 10th and May 26th, the WPT Online Series has an overall guarantee of $30 million across the entire series on partypoker, with the World Poker Tour events specifically totalling $7 million.

You’d fairly obviously want to be playing the whole series therefore, but with a red ring around the calendar date of the WPT Online Championship. That event alone has a $5 million guarantee and costs $3,200 to enter, with Day 1 flights running from the start of the online festival.

The World Poker Tour is one of the oldest and must trusted names in all of poker. In fact, it’s really the first major live tour name that truly went around the world, and along with the World Series of Poker, has done more than any other brand to grow the game.

It’s fitting, then, that in this era of Coronavirus, the World Poker Tour is heading online to provide poker players with the ultimate poker event with a big guaranteed prizepool and more tournaments than you could shake Vince Van Patten at.

Taking place between the dates of May 10th and May 26th, the WPT Online Series has an overall guarantee of $30 million across the entire series on partypoker, with the World Poker Tour events specifically totalling $7 million.

You’d fairly obviously want to be playing the whole series therefore, but with a red ring around the calendar date of the WPT Online Championship. That event alone has a $5 million guarantee and costs $3,200 to enter, with Day 1 flights running from the start of the online festival.

The World Poker Tour is one of the oldest and must trusted names in all of poker. In fact, it’s really the first major live tour name that truly went around the world, and along with the World Series of Poker, has done more than any other brand to grow the game.

It’s fitting, then, that in this era of Coronavirus, the World Poker Tour is heading online to provide poker players with the ultimate poker event with a big guaranteed prizepool and more tournaments than you could shake Vince Van Patten at.

Taking place between the dates of May 10th and May 26th, the WPT Online Series has an overall guarantee of $30 million across the entire series on partypoker, with the World Poker Tour events specifically totalling $7 million.

You’d fairly obviously want to be playing the whole series therefore, but with a red ring around the calendar date of the WPT Online Championship. That event alone has a $5 million guarantee and costs $3,200 to enter, with Day 1 flights running from the start of the online festival.

Does anyone else remember sports? They were these games, often involving balls, that grown adults would play, and so many of us would gain enjoyment from them by watching and betting on them. Whole gambling operations would revolve around providing a service for customers to do exactly that.

Unfortunately, most sports ended quite some time ago, but those same operators have ingeniously turned to alternatives for their customers to bet on. While zanier options, like betting on the weather and marbles, have taken plenty of the spot light, esports has started to really prove itself as an opportunity for action.

I can tell you from experience though, when you gear your operation around basketball and various types of football, suddenly expecting staff to be knowledgeable about what was once a niche product like esports can be challenging. Sure, the basic concepts of the betting mechanics and odds involved don’t change much, but running a superior shop means having agents who can speak to their customer about the product being offered.

So right about now, some operations might be thinking about giving their agents a crash course, or a refresher, to their agents in esports. To best understand how to do that, I reached out to Romil Hombrebueno, Director of Philippine Operations at Rocket Station, a virtual business processing outsourcing firm, and was a former colleague of mine in gambling operations.

Does anyone else remember sports? They were these games, often involving balls, that grown adults would play, and so many of us would gain enjoyment from them by watching and betting on them. Whole gambling operations would revolve around providing a service for customers to do exactly that.

Unfortunately, most sports ended quite some time ago, but those same operators have ingeniously turned to alternatives for their customers to bet on. While zanier options, like betting on the weather and marbles, have taken plenty of the spot light, esports has started to really prove itself as an opportunity for action.

I can tell you from experience though, when you gear your operation around basketball and various types of football, suddenly expecting staff to be knowledgeable about what was once a niche product like esports can be challenging. Sure, the basic concepts of the betting mechanics and odds involved don’t change much, but running a superior shop means having agents who can speak to their customer about the product being offered.

So right about now, some operations might be thinking about giving their agents a crash course, or a refresher, to their agents in esports. To best understand how to do that, I reached out to Romil Hombrebueno, Director of Philippine Operations at Rocket Station, a virtual business processing outsourcing firm, and was a former colleague of mine in gambling operations.

Gambling in Japan is still a tricky thing to do. Integrated Resorts look like they’re years away, and learning how to play pachinko isn’t for everyone. Many small time operators have turned to blockchain technology to offer new ways to gamble, but that offers no escape from the law.

To help those operators abide by local Japanese laws, the Blockchain Contents Association (BCA) have released guidelines to help them keep their hands clean. The Japanese self-regulatory organization, first established in February 2020, hopes to keep customers safe by promoting law abiding blockchain gaming.

These guidelines, if followed diligently, can help blockchain gambling sites follow the Law for Preventing Unjustifiable Extra or Unexpected Benefit and Misleading Representation, the Payment Services Act, and the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act.

One guideline is to avoid gacha mechanics. Popular in mobile games, and particularly in Japan, the BCA recommends against using non-fungible tokens that can only be obtained by spending real world money. That kind of bait-and-switch is likely to be found illegal in Japanese courts.

Scottish soccer club Ayr United FC has confirmed its partnership with Bitcoin SV (BSV) will continue into the new season, as it unveils its new kit supplier for the coming term.

Ayr United announced its kit would now be supplied by sportswear manufacturer Hummel, which will provide kit from the start of the 2020/21 season. The multi-year deal includes a minimum of one uniquely designed strip per season from Hummel’s designers.

We can’t wait to see you in this one, @AyrUnitedFC #ShareTheGame https://t.co/QmJ92BE8et

— hummel (@hummel1923) March 24, 2020

By now, everyone knows that the coronavirus has taken its toll on the entire global economy. Every industry has been hit hard, with stock prices plummeting more than what could have ever been imagined. The casino industry hasn’t been immune from the downfall, with some stocks dropping as much as 70%. However, as history has shown time and again, this slump is only temporary, and the economy will bounce back. Executives with Wynn Resorts are counting on it, and have elected to receive shares in lieu of paychecks for the rest of 2020.

Wynn Resorts announced yesterday that several of the company’s top officials, including CEO Matt Maddox, would participate in the stock-over-salary option. The company explained, “The Company’s CEO, Matt Maddox, agreed to forego 100% of his salary in exchange for shares for the remainder of the year. The cash savings arising from the executive salary reductions will be used to offset ongoing employee payroll and other expenses.”

It’s not a difficult decision to make, especially when you’re earning over $17 million a year. That was Maddox’s salary in 2018, broken down into $1.9 million in cash and $12 million in company stock. He signed a new agreement to continue as the company’s CEO for three more years last December at the same pay rate.

Other sharing office space with Maddox have gotten on board, as well. The company didn’t go into specifics on the different executives and their compensation agreements, but indicated that they had agreed to exchange their salary for anywhere from 33% to 100% in shares for the rest of the year.

South Shore Holdings Ltd., the company that was to bring the massive The 13 casino resort project to life in Macau, is facing a very difficult situation. Troubles surrounding the venue continue to pile up, as if it weren’t bad enough that the property will never realize its dream and financial losses are growing by the minute. If there were any chance that The 13 would at least be able to float along until being sold, those hopes were dashed when the coronavirus decimated the city. Now, South Shore has received word from a bank that it wants its money from a loan, and it wants it now.

South Shore sent a filing (in pdf) to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, where it is listed, yesterday, indicating that an unspecified bank is looking for outstanding interest on a loan. The bank wants an “immediate payment” of about $9.2 million, and warned that “enforcement steps to be taken without notice in the event of a failure to repay, inter alia, principal and further interest in the aggregate amount of approximately HKD470 million on 31 March 2020.”

Because of the ongoing issues with the The 13, and the fact that Macau is still operating on life support, South Shore doesn’t believe it will be able to cover the bank’s demand. It added, “Based on the current status, it is unlikely that the Group will be able to meet this deadline. It is still the Company’s intention that the Company will repay the bank out of the proceeds of disposal of a 50% interest in the subsidiary of the Company that beneficially owns THE 13 Hotel (details of which are set out in the Company’s announcement dated 1 November 2019). The Company is continuing in its efforts to finalise the circular relating to the proposed sale, but is aware that this is likely to necessitate an extension to the long stop date (currently being 14 April 2020) under the related sale and purchase agreements.”

South Shore was able to sell off half of its stake in The 13 last November to a conglomerate of companies that includes All Fame Developments Ltd., Ease Link Investments Ltd. and Fine Intellect Ltd. These three entities agreed to purchase the stake held by South Shore subsidiary Falloncroft Investments Ltd. for $95.7 million, but the deal still has to be finalized. As South Shore indicated in its filing, the deal isn’t expected to be consummated until the middle of next month.

The completion of the next phase of Galaxy Macau is going to face further delays as the result of a construction accident that occurred this week. The casino is currently working on Phase 3 of the project, which has already been delayed several times due to the large size of the development. However, the latest delay won’t have anything to do with lack of adequate scheduling or manpower. Instead, it will most likely stem from an investigation resulting from the collapse of scaffolding at the project that resulted in three employees losing their lives.

Galaxy Entertainment Group is behind the massive integrated resort project in Macau, and things were set to get back on track after the city recently began recovery efforts following the appearance of the coronavirus in the area. However, just as things were getting back to normal, disaster struck yesterday when the scaffolding suddenly gave way. In addition to the three deaths, four other construction workers were injured, but no word was given on the severity of the injuries.

It isn’t yet clear what caused the framework to collapse, but investigators are now trying to figure out what went wrong. All construction at the site has been temporarily suspended while that investigation is conducted. At this point, the only information revealed has been that the scaffolding gave way as the construction workers were busy clearing trash from an elevator.

Galaxy issued a statement following the accident, stating, “Galaxy Entertainment would like to express our deepest regrets over the accident, and extend our most heartfelt sympathies to the workers and their family members. After the incident, Galaxy Entertainment has taken all necessary actions and fully cooperated with the authorities to carry out rescue work and investigation.”