Monthly Archives: April 2020

ActiveWin Launch Emergency Resource for Gambling Businesses

ActiveWin Media Group has announced that it will support gambling brands during the Covid19 crisis by offering free auditing services for PPC, display media, SEO, social, CRM, and live chat reviews to help sportsbook operators, game developers, virtual sports, and white-labels. Furthermore, monthly PPC management fees are waived for the first month of activity, with reduced costs for the following two months for new clients to ease the economic impact of global lockdowns.

Marketing Director Mark Baker said: “Digital engagement is now critical for the survival of betting sites. Since we offer a full suite of digital options, we can share expertise beyond PPC and affiliate marketing. Our speciality is multi-channel campaigns that work in conjunction with each other for acquisition and retention, taking a holistic approach to how a brand performs across all player touchpoints. In-house experts execute the majority of our work instead of relying on automated third-party services to make strategic decisions, so if brands glean even a small advantage from our advice, we consider it a win.”

ActiveWin has grown exponentially within sportsbook, casino, bingo, and competition sites over the past six years. The recent impact on retail and sports has had a knock-on effect across the business. However, the diversity of the Group companies is helping to bolster divisions that have felt the economic squeeze more than others.

MD Warren Jacobs added: “Our initial priority was to do everything we possibly could for our brand partners like Betfred and Kerching once the lockdown hit. Immediately, we collaborated with clients to support them in every way we could. My team has executed the strategies beautifully, and we are on stable ground.

Holland Casino hails “excellent” result in corona-free 2019

The Netherlands’ state-owned land-based casino monopoly had a solid 2019, although it helped that the company wasn’t dealing with a global pandemic at the time.

Holland Casino’s annual report shows its 14 casinos reported gross revenue of just under €729m in 2019, an 11% improvement over 2018’s result. Net income rose 11% to €526.5m while after-tax profits rose 13.6% to €67.6m.

Last year’s gaming revenue gains featured slot machine revenue rising 12.8% year-on-year to €383.5m and table games rising 8.7% to €289m. Holland Casino enjoyed 6.2m visits from 1.2m individual customers in 2019, while average spend per customer per visit rose 2.5% to €117.

Like most Dutch retail operations, all Holland Casino locations have been closed since mid-March in a countrywide effort to minimize further spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. The current shutdown timeline extends for another two weeks, and CEO Erwin van Lambaart admits that “it is still unclear what will happen after April 28 and what the final impact will be for us. In any case, we are hit hard.”

Bars with slots get federal bailout, small casinos, not so much

Some of America’s smallest gaming operators now qualify for the federal government’s pandemic bailout but the US casino lobby says the offer doesn’t go nearly far enough.

On Tuesday, the federal Small Business Administration (SBA) issued revised guidelines for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which offers small businesses loans of up to $10m, which are forgivable if at least three-quarters of the cash is used to pay staff who would otherwise be affected by COVID-19 shutdowns.

Traditional SBA guidelines prohibit offering Economic Injury Disaster Loans to any business that derives “more than one-third of gross annual revenue from legal gambling activities.” The new guidelines allow a business to have up to one-half of its total revenue from gaming provided that gaming revenue didn’t exceed $1m in 2019.

The SBA believes the revised standard “appropriately balances the longstanding policy reasons for limiting lending to businesses primarily and substantially engaged in gaming activity with the policy aim of making the PPP Loan available to a broad segment of U.S. businesses and their employees.”

Lithuanian online gambling ops halt advertising during pandemic

Lithuania’s online gambling operators have agreed to curtail their marketing efforts during the COVID-19 lockdown after ignoring earlier requests from the country’s gambling regulator.

In mid-March, Lithuania’s government declared a country-wide quarantine to reduce further spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. The quarantine was scheduled to last through April 27 and the country’s Gaming Control Authority (GCA) ordered all land-based gambling venues to observe the closure order.

The country’s seven licensed online gambling operators – including Olympic Entertainment Group, Optibet and Betsson’s Betsafe brand – found themselves holding a temporary oligopoly, a privilege the GCA warned them not to abuse. The GCA urged its licensees to observe the guidance jointly issued by multiple European regulatory bodies for responsible advertising during the pandemic.

The GCA claimed to have got no response from its licensees regarding these recommendations, and further claimed to have notice an uptick in online gambling advertising on sports news sites. On April 6, the GCA again contacted its licensees, demanding confirmation that they would abide by the socially responsible recommendations.

Brendan Bussmann gives tips for Japan, Brazil, and other emerging markets

Going into a new, emerging market can be tricky, even more so when they haven’t entirely established their regulations. To do it right, it’s best to check with an expert first, so CalvinAyre’s Becky Liggero Fontana caught up with Brendan Bussmann of Global Market Advisors to talk about the current and future opportunities of Japan, Brazil and other emerging markets.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGyogUYhCy4?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

There’s always lots of exciting news coming out of Japan, and while COVID-19 has put a damper on progress, much of the insight Bussmann gave us when this interview was conducted in February still holds true. “There’s a lot of movement happening in Japan right now, partially because of some recent events that haven’t been the most pleasant things, with the scandal with 500.com and other things,” Bussmann said. “But it’s really where operators are finally getting to dig in, get an RFP [Request for Proposal] process going which will all start probably mostly Q2 with the exception of Osaka, and then basically about a year from now, delve into the full RFP process once those are chosen for the sites, between the prefecture and the partnership they create with an operator, try to win one of the three licenses at the central government level.”

Liggero Fontana asked Bussmann to help explain how Japan differs from the U.S., where he started. “I would say culturally, there’s some significant differences along the way, and things can’t get lost in translation,” he began. “That’s probably the biggest thing is, the educational standpoint. And what you can learn from the States, and I would say not just Nevada when I say that, but even I would take Singapore, those are pretty much the two jurisdictions they’re leaning off of when it comes to the regulatory structure. They want good clean operators that have a good solid past that not only has the financial wherewithal to do it but the regulatory background to say, ‘Hey, we know you’re going to be a good operator.’ And so, that’s what they’re gleaning off of. So they’re talking to Nevadans, they’re talking to the regulators in Nevada, they’re also talking to the Singaporeans, learning from their regulatory structure and seeing what’s going to be the best fit to make that Japanese fit along the way to make it happen.”

UK credit card gambling ban takes effect; sketchy online casino affiliates still gaming GAMSTOP

The UK’s ban on credit card gambling took effect Tuesday, while sketchy affiliates continue to use the GAMSTOP self-exclusion program’s name to promote Curacao-licensed online casinos.

On Tuesday, the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) issued a statement to its licensees reminding them that the government’s new ban on using credit cards for gambling purposes – including using credit cards to fund e-wallets that don’t prevent funding of gambling accounts – had officially come into force.

UKGC CEO Neil McArthur said the ban “ultimately reduces the risks of harm to consumers from gambling with money they do not have.” McArthur added that the ban was timely given reports of “an increase in the use of some online products, such as online slots and virtual sports,” as well as “an increase in UK consumer interest in gambling products” since the nation’s pandemic lockdown began.

SELF-ISOLATION AFFECTING SELF-EXCLUSION?

Foxwoods loses CEO, Connecticut casinos extend shutdown

Foxwoods Resorts Casino has lost its second CEO in as many years while both of Connecticut’s tribal casinos have extended their pandemic pause until the end of April.

On Tuesday, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation (MPTN) that operates Foxwoods said CEO John James had resigned, effective immediately. The tribe said James was leaving “to spend more time with his family and focus on his overall health and wellness in a time that is critically important for all of us to do.”

James had assumed the CEO position last July following the sudden death of former CEO Felix Rappaport in June 2018. James previously served as chief operating officer at another tribal gaming venue, the Morongo Casino Resort & Spa in California.

MPTN chairman Rodney Butler served as interim CEO following Rappaport’s death but the interim role will be filled this time by Jason Guyon, Foxwoods’ senior VP of resort operations and a MPTN member, until a permanent replacement can be identified.

NagaCorp denies reports of casino staffer COVID-19 infection

Cambodia’s largest casino operator is pushing back hard on media reports that one of its staff has tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus.

This past weekend, Cambodia’s Ministry of Health announced that it had confirmed two additional cases of COVID-19 infection in the nation’s capital Phnom Penh. The Ministry said one of these infections was a 50-year-old Canadian male working in a Phnom Penh casino.

Since the only legal casino in the capital is NagaCorp’s sprawling NagaWorld facility, local media began reporting that the infected casino staffer worked at NagaWorld. This prompted swift pushback from the property’s chief human resource officer Hein Dames, who told the Khmer Times that such reports were “misleading.”

Dames said the company had “thoroughly” checked its employment records, as well as those of its business partners and contractors, ultimately concluding that “NagaWorld does not have any such employee.”

Nektan appoints administrator after running out of cash

UK-listed online gambling technology provider Nektan Plc is entering administration once again after failing to find enough cash to keep its operations going.

On Tuesday, Nektan issued a notice that it had requested a halt in trading of its shares on the UK’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM), “pending clarification of the company’s financial position.” Shortly thereafter, the company announced that it had “failed to secure the necessary funds for the requisite additional working capital necessary to secure the future of the Company.”

As a result of this financing shortfall, Nektan said it had “commenced the process in the Gibraltar courts to seek to appoint an administrator, whose appointment is expected to be effective later today.”

Trading in Nektan’s shares was previously halted in January after the company failed to file its 2019 financial report on schedule, with the company’s ongoing restructuring efforts cited as the chief cause of the delay. A court then assigned PCR London execs the job of administrating Nektan Gibraltar, leading to the sale of Nektan’s B2C operations to Grace Media Ltd.