South Korea’s largest casino Kangwon Land has been granted more gaming tables and longer operating hours following its recent reopening after a long pandemic-related shutdown.

On Tuesday, Kangwon Land – the only South Korean casino in which local residents are allowed to access the gaming floor – informed investors that the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism had notified the company of “changes in the conditions for re-licensing the casino business.”

Said changes include boosting the number of mass market gaming tables from its current 160 up to 180, while the casino has been granted permission to extend the number of hours it’s allowed to operate per day from 18 to 20. The company implied that the changes won’t take immediate effect, as they “will be discussed separately with the Ministry of Education.”

Kangwon Land’s current three-year license wasn’t technically due to be renewed until December, but analysts expect the expanded hours and table numbers will be enshrined in the new license that will extend through the end of 2023.

Sweden has financially penalized another online gambling licensee for offering live casino games not covered under its license.

On Wednesday, Sweden’s Spelinspektionen regulatory body announced that it had imposed a SEK400k (US$41,700) on Glitnor Services Ltd, which operates in Sweden via seven domains, including fridacasino.com and luckycasino.com.

The regulator found fault with LuckyCasino offering several products from live casino technology specialists Evolution Gaming, including its Dream Catcher, Monopoly Live and Deal or No Deal titles. Spelinspektionen noted that these products aren’t covered by Glitnor’s local online casino and sports betting license.

The regulator found that the products in question relied on a combination of spinning wheels and symbols rather than slots reels, taking them outside the traditional definition of random number generator games and more like lottery games, which “may only be offered for non-profit purposes.”

Gambling operator and technology provider Playtech enjoyed an “extremely strong” first quarter of 2020 as its once-struggling financial services unit proved a pandemic star.

In a trading update issued Wednesday, the UK-listed Playtech reported adjusted earnings of €117m in the first three months of 2020, with an additional €23m in the month of April. The company said the Q1 result was “in large part driven by the exceptional performance” of its Tradetech financial services unit.

In March, Playtech said Tradetech was enjoying ‘significant’ gains from increased market volatility and trading volumes. As of March 19, Tradetech’s earnings stood around €30m, already ahead of the company’s forecasts for the entire year, and this sum grew to over €45m by the end of April.

Tradetech has undergone a major turnaround since 2019, during which its revenue fell 27% year-on-year, resulting in Playtech booking a €90m impairment loss. The situation was sufficiently dire that Playtech was publicly mulling selling the flailing unit, which would have had investors screaming bloody murder had the company made good on these threats.

Casino operator MGM Resorts has targeted Mississippi as the first US state in which to relaunch operations that were forced to close by the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Tuesday, MGM announced plans to reopen its Gold Strike Casino Resort in Tunica, Mississippi on Monday, May 25, with Biloxi’s Beau Rivage Resort & Casino throwing open its doors the following Monday, June 1. Both properties plan to hold invitation-only weekends ahead of their respective openings.

Under the reopening plan announced last week by the Mississippi Gaming Commission, all reopened casinos will be limited to 50% of their normal capacity. The MGM casinos will also be subject to the company’s ‘seven-point safety plan,’ which will require customers to observe physical distancing and, in some cases – such as gaming tables at which physical barriers aren’t in place – wear masks provided by MGM at no cost.

Each property will also offer a selection of their normal food & beverage offerings, with guests receiving text messages when their tables are ready to avoid congregating at the entranceways. Both properties are also accepting room reservations for stays starting according to their respective openings.

Kenya’s sports betting market was generating monthly turnover of US$281m before the government’s ill-advised 2019 decision to ‘get tough’ with bookmakers.

On Monday, local media outlet The Nation reported seeing leaked Betting Control & Licensing Board (BCLB) data detailing Kenyan-licensed bookmakers’ revenue declarations for May 2019, immediately prior to the government issuing dubious back-tax demands to BCLB betting licensees.

The BCLB data reportedly shows market-wide turnover of over Ksh30b ($280.9m) in May 2019, encompassing some 180m individual wagers. That averages out to roughly Ksh167 ($1.56) per wager, in a country where the average monthly income is around Ksh12k.

The figures include both online and retail betting figures, but a source told The Nation that the retail figures, which lack the digital trail that allows the BCLB to verify the online operators’ filings, were likely to be seriously under-reported, meaning the overall turnover figure could be much higher.

Kenya’s sports betting market was generating monthly turnover of US$281m before the government’s ill-advised 2019 decision to ‘get tough’ with bookmakers.

On Monday, local media outlet The Nation reported seeing leaked Betting Control & Licensing Board (BCLB) data detailing Kenyan-licensed bookmakers’ revenue declarations for May 2019, immediately prior to the government issuing dubious back-tax demands to BCLB betting licensees.

The BCLB data reportedly shows market-wide turnover of over Ksh30b ($280.9m) in May 2019, encompassing some 180m individual wagers. That averages out to roughly Ksh167 ($1.56) per wager, in a country where the average monthly income is around Ksh12k.

The figures include both online and retail betting figures, but a source told The Nation that the retail figures, which lack the digital trail that allows the BCLB to verify the online operators’ filings, were likely to be seriously under-reported, meaning the overall turnover figure could be much higher.

Pennsylvania’s online lottery sales have topped $1b in less than two years, and growth has accelerated in recent weeks under pandemic lockdown conditions.

On Monday, the Pennsylvania Lottery’s technology partner Scientific Games Corporation issued a public congratulation to the Lottery for “the most commercially successful iLottery online/mobile launch in North America.”

Pennsylvania’s iLottery made its official debut in the May 2018, offering a mix of traditional draw lottery products and instant win games that critics likened to slot machines. The iLottery’s first full year of sales totaled $381m but Sci-Games said Monday that total sales had now topped $1b ahead of the iLottery’s second birthday.

Sci-Games boldly predicted that the iLottery was “on track to top $1b in sales annually,” partly due to the fact that the iLottery is currently the only game in town. In late-April, Pennsylvania Lottery spokesperson Ewa Dworakowski told local media that sales of scratch-tickets and draw games were down by one-quarter following the closure of around 30% of the lottery’s 9,800 retail points of sale due to COVID-19.

Pennsylvania’s online lottery sales have topped $1b in less than two years, and growth has accelerated in recent weeks under pandemic lockdown conditions.

On Monday, the Pennsylvania Lottery’s technology partner Scientific Games Corporation issued a public congratulation to the Lottery for “the most commercially successful iLottery online/mobile launch in North America.”

Pennsylvania’s iLottery made its official debut in the May 2018, offering a mix of traditional draw lottery products and instant win games that critics likened to slot machines. The iLottery’s first full year of sales totaled $381m but Sci-Games said Monday that total sales had now topped $1b ahead of the iLottery’s second birthday.

Sci-Games boldly predicted that the iLottery was “on track to top $1b in sales annually,” partly due to the fact that the iLottery is currently the only game in town. In late-April, Pennsylvania Lottery spokesperson Ewa Dworakowski told local media that sales of scratch-tickets and draw games were down by one-quarter following the closure of around 30% of the lottery’s 9,800 retail points of sale due to COVID-19.

India’s largest casino operator Delta Corp saw its revenue and profit slide in the final quarter of its fiscal year but the company is confident it can ride out the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown.

On Monday, Delta Corp issued its report covering the three months ending March 31, the fourth quarter of its fiscal year. Revenue fell 10% year-on-year to Rs1.91b (US$25.3m), while pre-tax profits fell by more than one-half to Rs433m and after-tax profits fell 49% to Rs290.4m.

Delta’s mainstay casino operations in the states of Goa and Sikkim were forced to close in mid-March, which helped push the quarter’s gross gaming revenue down nearly one-fifth to Rs1.6b, while non-gaming hospitality revenue fell 24% to Rs179m. The company’s online ‘skill gaming’ operations fared better, rising nearly 22% to Rs453m.

The figures weren’t much better on the full-year front, as revenue slipped 2.7% to Rs8.07b, pre-tax profit slid 18.6% to Rs2.56b and after-tax profit dipped 5.6% to Rs1.85b. The company’s shares lost 4.5% by the close of Monday’s trading.

UK gamblers aren’t griping about unauthorized online gambling sites during the pandemic, while a new survey shows many problem gamblers have yet to access available treatment programs.

On Tuesday, the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) announced that there’d been no uptick in complaints during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown regarding gambling sites lacking a local license. There were 12 complaints about nine sites in March, and 11 complaints about 11 sites in April.

The regulator said the number of complaints has been stable over the past year, suggesting (a) there’s been no surge in traffic to unauthorized sites following the regulator’s increased restrictions, or (b) those internationally licensed operators haven’t been ill-treating their UK customers.

The UKGC recently released data showing there’d been no significant increase in either gambling activity or problem gambling behavior since the pandemic lockdown began in March. But results of a new survey by the industry-funded problem gambling charity GambleAware suggests that problem gamblers aren’t always making use of the mitigation measures at their disposal.