Spain’s online gambling operators have been told to restrict their marketing efforts to avoid taking advantage of problem gamblers on lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Tuesday, Spanish media reported that the government’s Council of Ministers had taken the advice of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs to prohibit online gambling advertising for the duration of the country’s coronavirus lockdown “to prevent bookmakers from doing business with people’s concern and anxiety.”

Government official Pablo Iglesias issued the order saying that the decision was adopted “in a context of confinement that makes it even more necessary” to protect problem gamblers. The current COVID-19 lockdown is set to extend through April 12 and could be extended if the rates of community transmission remain unchecked.

The government was reportedly pushed to act after receiving reports from problem gambling groups that calls from addicted gamblers had increased since the lockdown was imposed.

The online gambling mega-merger of Flutter Entertainment and The Stars Group (TSG) has received a thumbs-up from the UK’s competition watchdog.

On Tuesday, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced that the proposed merger of the UK-listed Flutter and the Toronto/Nasdaq-listed TSG “will not worsen the offering to people who choose to bet online.” The news pushed the share prices of both companies up sharply on their respective exchanges.

In February, the CMA opened its investigation of the merger, which was announced last October, based on concerns that it might result in “a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services.”

The CMA said the evidence it gathered during its probe determined that, while the merging companies do completely closely, “they are among a number of close competitors” with whom online gambling customers “frequently open accounts and to whom they could easily switch.”

With almost 80% of their epic contest in the books, Phil Galfond is within punching range of his nemesis VeniVidi as the two men head towards the climax of their Galfond Challenge meeting.

The first meeting in this series of at least five matches, the Galfond Challenge could hardly have got off to a more intriguing start. Down $900,000 after around 40% of the match, Galfond went deep into the tank, and emerged declaring that he was ready to resume play.

Since that decision, and his lowest ebb in terms of losing, Galfond has bounced back in spectacular style. Having won consistently over the last fortnight, Galfond is now within range of VeniVidi, with the difference between the two men just €154,287.93 in VeniVidi’s favor.

With Galfond now closing in on parity, what are the chances he gets there, or even overtakes VeniVidi on the home straight? Well, of the 25,000 hands that were scheduled to be played, the two men have only completed 19,363 of them. With just 5,637 hands to go, the market for the outright win on Poker Shares has VeniVidi as the favourite, but not a huge one.

As if there weren’t enough reasons to buy Betsson and NetEnt, here’s another compelling one. The Swedish government looks to be about the only one in the world right now that hasn’t gone completely totalitarian. There is no lockdown, the Swedish economy is still functioning, people are going out to restaurants and malls without being fined or arrested or bludgeoned with stocks (India), employees are showing up at work as usual, and nobody is freaking out.

Yes, rational precautions are being made. It’s not like authorities are completely ignoring what’s going on or trying to claim that COVID-19 is no big deal. They’re just advising people nicely and treating their population like adults. Take reasonable precautions like washing hands, wear a mask outside if you have one, work at home if possible, advising the elderly and sick to stay home for safety, and everyone chill out. It’s Sweden. It’s chilly. It comes naturally to them.

One would think that such lax standards would lead to the mass infection of the entire country by now, but no. Just 4,028 infected as of March 30 out of a population of about 10.2 million. Neighboring Norway has 4,462 so far and half the population, so more than double the infection rate, and Norway is on lockdown. Infection rates are 100x less than Italy per capita, and Italy was the first country in Europe to go on lockdown and its government is now risking losing control of the population. That’s much worse than even a 100% coronavirus infection rate.

Obviously none of this is a scientific analysis, just anecdotal evidence that forced lockdowns from the top down may not be the best solution to this problem. In locked-down countries, the weak sectors of society who may not have died from the virus could become impoverished and could even die from the loss of their livelihoods.

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.

Adda52.com organizes a special tournament for Covid-19 Helpcare Fund

In the times when the entire world has been hit by Coronavirus and due to the lockdown across the nation, the poor and the underprivileged are unable to acquire the basic necessities like food, Adda52.com India’s leading poker game company has announced a special tournament- Falcon, starting from 27 March up till 1st April at 4 PM every day. The amount collected during the tournament will be donated to towards the Covid-19 Helpcare in the PM Relief Fund.

The tournament will offer a Guaranteed Prize Pool of 5 Lakhs every day to the players. Adda52 as a market leader has always stood by its country during the times of need and hence, the main agenda of this tournament is to donate the revenue earned to the Relief Fund.

There is still plenty of time before Japan has to finalize choices for its three integrated resort (IR) licenses, but the current troubles caused by the coronavirus have still had an impact. MGM Resorts have announced a delay to their Osaka plans, while Yokohama is not wasting time in building up their IR effort.

The same day that news broke that Osaka would be extending their Request for Proposal (RFP) process an additional three months, MGM Resorts commented that their own plans to develop an Osaka IR would have to be delayed as well. But Ed Bowers, CEO of MGM Resorts Japan LLC, said delay won’t deter them. “MGM will continue to proceed with our efforts to create a proposal that will be appreciated by the entire Osaka community, taking into account the schedule announced by the government,” he said.

MGM looks to be the winner of Osaka’s IR process, but the prefecture’s decision to extend the process could mean a late entrant still has a chance. But in the likely outcome that MGM wins, they have partnered with Japanese financial services company Orix for its bid.

Brendan Bussmann of Global Market Advisors commented that he still expects, regardless of the delay, that an Osaka resort will be completed by 2026.“Osaka still has time on their side,” he said.

The Bitcoin SV (BSV) blockchain is capable of handling every aspect of gaming, from recording every little action of the game to being the transaction method of choice for gamers. That can be true in the gambling world, but SatoPlay is proving it works in casual gaming as well. SatoPlay is building on it’s success by announcing it’s first third-party game, Leap Day Birds.

The BSV-based casual gaming platform launched in September, 2019, and had already launched two games in December of that year. Leap Day Bird, developed by Momo Game Studios, marks SatoPlay’s debut as an open platform.

SatoPlay is based out of Guangdong China, and was founded by Gu Lu. While he’s had plenty of experiencing in developing games, he wanted to start Sato Play when he saw the potential to develop on the BSV blockchain, and profit off of it’s new potential business models.

“Our goal is not just a few trendy games,” Lu sid. “Our goal is to create an open gaming platform for more games to launch and for gamers to have fun. Existing developers can swiftly deploy their products on the BSV network through SatoPlay and improve their game’s fairness as well as giving users micropayment rewards. To further streamline the launch process for third-party developers, SatoPlay has built up the login system and in-game purchase channels and provides onchain processing for all parts of a game.”

“Let’s go back in time a bit. I’m 15 years old, and it’s 2003.”

In one sentence, Jake Cody gets to the heart of what many poker players feel was the moment their own careers started. Chris Moneymaker winning the World Series of Poker Main Event. But how did the kid from Rochdale in the North West of England fare?

He became the youngest ever ‘Triple Crown’ winner – the old classic triple crown of a WPT Main Event, an EPT Main Event and a World Series of Poker bracelet.

You probably already know all of this about Jake Cody. You’ll know he was a PokerStars Team Pro, is part of the Brit Pack of this decade, is fearless at the felt and fun off it. You know this.

LeoVegas will be undergoing a number of changes in its corporate executive structure, and the biggest is that Per Norman will take over as the company’s new chairman. This was announced in the company’s notice for their upcoming annual general meeting, which will be held on May 8, 2020.

The new chairman has an impressive resume beginning with his time at MRG Group, where he was the Group Chief Executive from 2015-19. Most recently, Norman was the Chairman of Gamingzone AB, a Scandinavian esports entertainment platform and served on the board of Green Jade Games and Sverige Television Aktiegolag.

In addition to the naming of Norman, there were other appointments included in the release. IT expert Carl Larsson and Tortsen Söderberg were also named as company directors. They will work to support the new chairman. Larsson helped co-found DigitalRoute. Söderberg is a former member of the board at both Cherry Gaming and Stingbet.

There will be two members leaving the board as well. Mårten Forste and Tuva Palm chose to decline re-election, reducing the number of board members to seven directors.

With the casino industry being one of the hardest hit by the global outbreak of the coronavirus, casino operators and virtually everyone else tied to the market is being forced to find ways to scrimp and save until things can return to normal. Some companies, such as William Hill, found their leaders opting to completely forego compensation in order to help provide some relief to their employees. Others took a more self-serving route and opted to take shares in lieu of salary. Las Vegas-based gaming company Scientific Games (SG) has now announced how its top executives are responding to the COVID-19 disaster, with the company brass falling into the first camp.

CEO Barry Cottle is voluntarily giving up 100% of his salary, while others in upper leadership positions have agreed to take a 50% cut in compensation. While there is still going to be a need to reduce workforce hours, and possibly the level of employees for a little while, the company stands to release millions of dollars in the short-term to help ease the pressure felt by the global pandemic.

In addition, SG will also establish a Hardship Relief Fund for its employees and their families. This fund is designed to help cover any unexpected costs as operations scale back because of coronavirus, and will receive immediate support from SG’s revenue, as well as from Cottle and other senior executives.

The CEO explains in the announcement, “Like many others, our industry is facing unprecedented challenges from the widespread impact of the COVID-19 outbreak. We are working around the clock to take care of our employees, customers, shareholders and other key stakeholders in these difficult times, while providing uninterrupted products and services to those customers who continue to operate. Thankfully, we came into this year with a very strong liquidity position, including substantial capacity under our revolver, and also refinanced our debt, extended our major maturities and lowered our interest expense. We have a diverse portfolio of assets, product and services that uniquely position us to weather this crisis.”