Online sports betting exchange Betfair is cutting off its Russian customers on the same day its parent company Flutter Entertainment completed its mega-merger with PokerStars’ parent The Stars Group (TSG).

Betfair’s Russian customers woke Tuesday to discover that the site had “taken the decision to close its websites for all existing Russian customers.” The site is no longer accepting new customer registrations and existing customers have been given until May 18 to withdraw the funds in their accounts.

There was no justification provided for the withdrawal, which apparently also applies to Estonia. Betfair has in the past withdrawn from certain grey/black markets after being publicly shamed for operating without approval of local authorities, although there’s no indication that Betfair has received any recent regulatory brushback in Russia.

Various Betfair domains have occasionally surfaced in the online blacklist of Russia’s telecom watchdog Rozkomnadzor. But Betfair.com’s most recent scarlet letter was issued at the end of January, so if this is a response to that tagging, it took a while to sink in.

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.

Pronet Gaming adds MrSlotty content to its portfolio

Next generation platform provider Pronet Gaming has once again enhanced its comprehensive portfolio of casino offerings after agreeing a deal with MrSlotty.

The deal will see Pronet Gaming integrate more than 50 of the supplier’s slot games onto its platform as it continues to offer operators access to content from a diverse range of industry developers.

After a wonderful first day of the iGaming NEXT Online conference that focused on self-improvement, the second day took a hard look at the realities the gambling industry now must face as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. A pair of panels took a look at the realities the Human Resources departments of iGaming firms will face, and the business opportunities in front of them.

Pierre Lindh, Co-founder of iGaming NEXT, once again welcomed the audience at the beginning of the day. He celebrated the success of the first day, noting more than 500 showed up to watch the talks on offer. This proves, he noted, a hunger for knowledge during times like this.

He then hosted a panel of HR leaders for a discussion on “1 Year on From Covid 19: Positive and Negative Changes Experienced in the Gaming Industry Workforce.” Joining him were Fiona Ewins Brown, CHRO of CatenaMedia, Heidi Lofthus, CPO of Comeon Group, and Marie Louise Theobald, CPO of Hero Gaming.

Brown noted off the bat that, even during the before times, hiring for Malta is more difficult than other countries. Her company had already started discussions about if people need to be in the office, or if they can work remotely. Overnight, she noted the company had to shift to everyone working from their home offices. The focus now is squarely on making sure people stay productive and don’t burn out.

Given everything that’s going on in the world, it’s hard not to talk about historical turning points. Only time will clarify this for historians, but it does look like the world is at a significant turning point right now. If there are such things as physical manifestations of historical crossroads, then one of them is in Macau.

Let’s first go back in time exactly 102 years to the Spring of 1918. The first relatively mild wave of what turned out to be the deadliest pandemic in world history, the so-called Spanish Flu, was just starting. Within a month, Russian Czar Nicholas II would be assassinated, which would lead to the rise of communism throughout Asia and to the deaths of about 100 million or so people.  The Great War was on the verge of ending, but before it did, the second and much more severe wave of the Spanish Flu swept through the planet, killing up to 50 million people by some estimates. That was more than the entire death toll of 40 million for what was at that point the worst war ever fought.

World War I led to heavily inflationary monetary policy throughout the world in order to fight it. That led to a hyperinflationary collapse in Germany, a depression in the United States, and eventually World War II. The only reason, by the way, that there was hyperinflation in one country and depression in the other was that the dollar was backed by gold while the German mark was not. In terms of gold though, both countries experienced severe deflation. This time though, everything is paper. Good luck with that, world.

We are again in a pandemic and approaching the peak of inflationary monetary policy. We’ve seen this movie before. The next act is typically punctuated by xenophobia and scapegoating by political leaders looking to pass on the blame to anyone but themselves.

Live poker has been shut down for over six weeks in almost every territory around the world. Since Coronavirus forced the game back inside people’s homes, poker has continued, however. Online tournaments have welcomed players who might usually have ventured outside into their virtual lobbies and poker brands such as PokerStars, partypoker and GG Poker have all hosted big events in the last few weeks.

With the looming possibility that Las Vegas has been secretly preparing to reopen venues such as casinos in order to maintain an economy in a city built on the entertainment and gambling industries, the obvious question has been whether live poker will come back and if so, how and when?

Plans to reopen poker’s live game are obviously riddled with issues. How do you keep players from transmitting the Coronavirus when the cards, poker chips and dealer button are all potentially contaminated?

A glimpse at the equipment needed to restrict players from being in contact and maintain a social distance has led to some poker players commenting disparagingly on the visual for what would be an incredibly complicated physical set-up, although Phil Galfond of Run It Once chose to focus on what many players thought; that playing online would be much, much easier than resorting to this sort of table sitting in your local casino.

It has taken much longer than anyone had initially anticipated, but Japan is finally almost ready to present the final version of the government’s Basic Policy, the generic framework that will serve as the foundation for the country’s integrated resort (IR) market. Many people had thought Japan would now be at a point where it was making the final choices for the first three licenses to be issued, but establishing a new industry, especially one that hasn’t received an overwhelming amount of support, is proving to be a monumental challenge. According to the latest update, the Basic Policy must be ready by July 26, but what happens after that is anyone’s guess. According to Bay City Ventures, a consultancy firm out of Japan, it could be next year before the plan is put into action.

Joji Kokuryo, Bay City’s managing director and recipient of the G2E Asia 2019 Industry Rising Star award, asserts in his report (in pdf) that there is “no date more important than 30 July 2021.” He adds, “The submission period for IR implementation plans to the Central Government by local governments and their IR partners runs from 4 January 2021 to 30 July 2021. This clear deadline affects every single timeline. If there are to be changes, it is much more likely that the July 2021 deadline is moved than the 26 July 2020 date, as the latter would involve revising the IR Implementation Law.”

The Basic Policy has been created to serve as only the foundation, but there are plenty of other aspects of the IR operations that have not yet been defined, such as taxes and specific gaming regulations. These will all factor into the final makeup of Japan’s gaming industry, and are important pieces that could potentially impact how operators present their casino plans. A delay of even a month can completely throw the entire schedule off.

Kokuryo explains, “The four candidate local governments [Osaka, Yokohama, Nagasaki and Wakayama] have been moving around their schedules for a variety of reasons, however the one constant has always been to have their IR business partner decided in Autumn 2020. This is a simple back calculation from the 30 July 2021 deadline, because there must be sufficient time to openly discuss and create a sound business plan for their application to the Central Government. “Regardless of when the RFP procedure begins, local governments currently have a rough estimate of two to three months after receiving operator proposals to select their IR partner and at the very least seven months to finalize with their partner an IR business plan. “This makes for a very tight schedule.”

The major U.S. sports leagues, as well as the NCAA, are looking at millions – if not billions – of dollars in losses because of the coronavirus. The total amount of damage may never be accurately calculated, but whatever figures are presented as the leagues have been forced into suspension might need to have another $150 million tacked on. That’s how much a horseracing track in New Jersey wants the organizations to pony up, and the U.S. Supreme Court might determine next week whether or not it will hear the case.

Monmouth Park Racetrack felt it was being denied fair income when the leagues helped to block a newly-created sports gambling law in 2014. The track, with the help of the New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association (NJTHA), secured a $3.4-million bond from the leagues while New Jersey challenged their intervention. The bond was meant to serve as a guarantee to cover potential losses while the track was prevented from putting up lines on sports contests. As with any major legal case in the U.S., it would take years before the case could be decided, and an answer was provided only after the Supreme Court had abolished the misguided PASPA in 2018.

The sports leagues didn’t want to pay up, even though a federal appeals court sided with the NJTHA last year. However, long gone was the request for just $3.4 million – with a little extra thrown in for interest. The leagues had been so determined to keep sports gambling out of the Garden State that the horseman’s group now estimated its losses to be as much as $150 million. The two sides attempted to work out their differences and reach a settlement that would make everyone happy, but the attempt was futile.

If the leagues had simply reacted favorably to the bond, it could have cut its losses and moved on. However, the NJTHA enlisted the help of gaming research firm Eilers and Krejcik to try to calculate how much money it lost between May 2014 and May 2018, when the Supreme Court nixed PASPA, and the figure rose to $139.7 million. Since the two sides haven’t been able to come up with a mutually-beneficial agreement, the leagues asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, arguing that the NJTHA doesn’t have legal grounds to demand the amount.