Monthly Archives: April 2020

How UK betting habits have changed in the face of COVID-19

The world’s economy has been warped immeasurably by the global outbreak of COVID-19, businesses have suffered, and people’s day-to-day lives have changed beyond belief.

There are many oddities that have arisen during these difficult times, some that will shape the way we live for many months and years to come and some that will only last for the duration of these troubling times. 

Whilst it’s certainly not even close to being one of the hardest-hitting issues the general public are faced with right now, the lack of live sport, and by extension live sports betting, has come as a shock to the system to so many that rely on it as their main form of entertainment.

Without the allure of the Premier League football, horse racing, boxing and other live sporting staples, people across the United Kingdom are turning to other forms of betting in order to keep themselves occupied during lockdown.

230 may be later than you think

How “Fake News” and Coronavirus may affect I-gaming

“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny”

Edmund Burke

Should Internet service providers be punished if the content of a given webpage or app is deemed “harmful,” or “criminal”? It sounds like a philosophical question. But how that question is answered, or even asked, will be hugely important to the future of Internet and interactive gaming, gambling very much included.

Gaming: Giovanni Garrisi (CEO Stanleybet and Magellan Robotech) confirmed at SBC Digital Summit

On April 27, at the largest online meeting in the betting and gaming industry, the emergency linked to Covid-19 will be discussed

Liverpool, 3 April 2020 – Giovanni Garrisi, CEO of Stanleybet and Magellan Robotech, will partecipate in the SBC Digital Summit, the largest online event designed to inspire the betting and gaming industry during turbulent times, especially with COVID-19 continuing to spread with huge impact on all our businesses. To address the state of our industry, SBC has gathered the very best industry experts and thought leaders to share their views and discuss what tools we can use and look at the opportunities ahead of us. The intervention of Dr. Garrisi is scheduled for the first day of the event, Monday 27 April, from 12 to 12.40 (UK time), within the panel “An opportunity to revisit the omni-channel approach?”. The other important speakers who will participate in the same appointment will be: Fabio Schiavolin (CEO Snaitech), Per Widerstrom (CEO Fortuna Group) and Johnny Hartnett (CEO SuperBet).

How can companies with large retail estates manage their human resources effectively during the COVID-19 outbreak? Can they be redeployed to online services or is it a case of ‘furloughing’ them until shops can re-open? Does this enforced stoppage allow us to revisit the omni-channel experience?

These are the themes on which the panel will focus, certainly one of the highlights of the entire Summit.

BtoBet puts in place strategy for sportsbook shortfall

• Alessandro Fried: “An opportunity for bookmakers to diversify srategies and overcome over-reliance on sportsbook”

With the novel coronavirus disrupting the sporting calendar and putting on hold the sportsbook industry, leading platform provider BtoBet has put in place and launched a strategy in order to aid bookmakers during this trying time. The strategy aims to assist sportsbook operators to retain their current fold of players, shifting their engagement from pure betting on sports events to other alternative verticals mitigating and avoiding a downfall in revenue.

Amongst other aspects the strategy involves the introduction of special content for those bookmakers making use of the BtoBet services, including:

• a daily selection of the most important horse-racing events,

First speakers at Betting in face of COVID-19 Europe: Experts in Marketing, Law and Consulting

Betting in face of COVID-19 – an online conference dedicated to crisis management of the European betting business during the pandemic, will take place on April 17. Top experts of the industry will share their experience and the most successful cases of fighting crisis on the global market.

Event program is still under development, but first three speakers of Betting in face of COVID-19 Europe are on board.

First speakers of the online conference and presentations

The founder of Brand Architects Harry Lang will make a presentation “Online betting during the pandemic: current market state, alternative betting lines and further development”. Expert provided his marketing services for such gambling brands as Pinnacle, bwin, Genting Bet, Party Casino, bwin Casino, WMS Jackpot Party, Pinnacle Casino, Grosvenor Casino, Genting Casino, Absolute Poker, Party Poker, Foxy Bingo, Mecca Bingo, Cheeky Bingo, Pinnacle eSports, CS:GO Empire and Puntt.gg.

Avery Palos on the ways blockchain is improving casino operations

One of the more revealing presentations at G2E Asia was delivered by Melco’s Senior Vice President and Chief Information officer Avery Palos, who revealed how his company is betting big on blockchain to keep customers safe, and the casino compliant. CalvinAyre’s Stephanie Tower caught up with Palos on the sidelines, who explained Melco Resorts’ blockchain strategy in greater detail.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsbs79-4bpA?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

Blockchain is quickly proving to be an essential technology, and casino resort operators like Melco are understanding how it can help build stronger relationships with regulators. “I think it’s important because we’re looking for mechanisms where it’s an immutable record, where things can’t be changed, they can’t be modified, can’t be tampered with, and for particular types of transaction, this is sweet spot really,” Palos said. “So for cage, obviously, we don’t want people messing with what’s happening in the cage. Very, very, very important that we can show the regulator that we are in compliance, that all of our transactions are monitored, and that nobody’s effecting afterwards. In the case with responsible gaming, and particularly of a jurisdiction we have multiple operators, it’s important to be able to share that information about who is not allowed into the casino, but in a secure and safe way, it’s not appropriate for me to give you more information than I should, and more less information I should, but we all have a responsibility as operators and as regulators to ensure that those people at risk do not get in the casino. I think again blockchain does that wonderfully.”

During his presentation, Palos noted that while Melco is building a blockchain platform for their own benefit, they’ll make most of it available for other operators to use, to benefit the industry as a whole. Tower asked about building relationships with other operators, and if they’ve shown an interest yet. “I think there’s a lot of people who are very, very interested,” Palos responded. “I think that a wave of new innovators and startups who are very, very keen working with us, and we’re really keen to work with them, to be honest. And even established operators, we’re finding places where we can build bridges, particularly as we can tighten the integration between those products. So I’m very excited about the opportunities.”

partypoker host Irish Open Online and host charity drive for freelance poker dealers

With the enforced suspension of live tournament poker, many operators have either cancelled their events or moved them online, in many cases offering big guarantees and a full schedule.

The latter is definitely true for the 2020 Irish Open, which is heading online from today after a decision to bring poker players the oldest poker tournament in Europe online was reached by the Irish Open and partypoker, who will host the festival.

With 22 events, partypoker have put together a massive overall guarantee of €2.7 million which features events such as the Ladies Event, Main Event and Mini Main Event. The Main Event’s buy-in of €1,100 looks incredibly reasonable given the event’s guarantee is a cool million euros. There are four Day 1s, which start from Wednesday until Saturday, when Day 2 also takes place, with the Irish Open final on Sunday 12th April.

Formats include the standard no limit hold’em as well as NLH 6-Max, NLH 8-Max, Pot Limit Omaha 6-Max and PLO 8-Max too, with something for everybody. The festival runs from Monday April 6th until Sunday April 12th, with the week of events sure to please players around the world who otherwise might not have been able to travel to the Emerald Isle.

The evolution of Esports bettors

The Sportsbetting market for Esports fans has grown and grown in recent times. Now a study carried out by Loot with research into their own internal statistics and a poll of their customers habits sent out by email has yielded some very interesting results.

Loot themselves are growing as a business in line with Esports sportsbetting itself. Paul Brel, Head of Communications for Livestream, Loot’s operating company published the results of the poll as Loot gears up for what is a very busy period for the company founded in 2016.

“The difference between esports bettors and traditional bookmakers’ clients is huge,” said Brel. “The matter is not just – and not even so much – in the age gap which in itself implies certain distinctions. Esports fans breathe cutting-edge technologies; they are very mobile, yet so involved with the community; they are more likely to rely on their knowledge and skills rather than on luck; for them, esports is not just a hobby but a lifestyle – which you wouldn’t say about a regular classic sports bettor.”

As Brel hints at, it takes a modern, progressive attitude to attracting new bettors to Esports platforms to be successful. This information will be important to those betting businesses who want to step forward into the next quarter with the drive to grow.

Poker video blogs: Daniel Negreanu’s Vegas-based Odyssey

In the latest in our series all about the art of video blogs about the game of poker, we’re taking a look at one of the most popular and successful players the game has ever seen – Daniel Negreanu.

[Image credit: Daniel Negreanu via YouTube]

A six-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, Negreanu has amassed over $42 million in live tournament winnings, and has largely done so without playing the Super High Roller events that the two men above him in that list – Justin Bonomo ($49m) and Bryn Kenney ($56m) – have done so very frequently.

You might ask why Negreanu has peppered the internet with videos of him and his Vegas lifestyle. After all, he’s not trying to get an audience, having one of the largest fanbases in poker. Quite simply, after watching hours of him in action in the entire collection of his vlogs, Negreanu clearly loves the game and it motivates to such a level that he wants to share his journey through his poker career and life.

Premier League Season hangs in the balance as money and health battle for power

A major row has been rumbling all week about the controversial steps taken – or not taken – by Premier League clubs and players when it comes to the vast wages that they take home and whether they should still do so during a global pandemic.

It’s a minefield of misdirection, egotistical explosions and hypocritical hubris and it doesn’t look anywhere near a resolution.

As we reported last week, Premier League players were doing their bit to reach out to the fans and convince them to stay at home in order to slow the spread of Coronavirus. In the past seven days, however, the public mood has turned in some quarters from admiration and solidarity with their idols to wondering if the millionaires who often live in mansions by comparison to football fans could be doing a bit more to help with the millions that they have made.

In a decision made on Friday, Premier League clubs agreed that an indefinite postponement of the English Premier League was the only choice they could make with no immediate end in sight to the global pandemic of COVID-19. The 2019/20 Premier League season will only resume when it is completely safe to do so.

Virtual Grand National betting raises £2.6m for UK charities

UK bookmakers will donate £2.6m to National Health Service (NHS) charities thanks to bets placed on Saturday’s Virtual Grand National race.

A total of 4.8m viewers tuned into this weekend’s Virtual Grand National broadcast on ITV, representing nearly one-third of all UK TV viewers at the time. Virtual nag Potters Corner – an 18-1 longshot – won the simulated horserace, which was put together by Inspired Entertainment using historical data, algorithms and CGI.

While the viewer numbers were only half of those that were expected to have tuned in had the real Grand National been allowed to run, it represented a more than six-fold increase over the 2019 Virtual Grand National ratings. This year marked the third year that ITV has aired a virtual race before the real deal.

With most other racing and sports events cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, bookmakers were only too happy to offer wagers on this year’s Virtual Grand National. However, UK bookmakers offered to donate all profits generated from the event to NHS charities, rather than be seen to be taking advantage of punters in these trying times.