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This year’s coronavirus-affected NASCAR Cup Series schedule has been very unusual, including a few tracks holding events on both Wednesday and Sunday. NASCAR is doing what it can to get in every single race that had been scheduled.

However, what will happen this weekend at Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pennsylvania takes the cake. The Cup Series will stage the Pocono Organics 325 on Saturday and then turn right around 24 hours later and run the Pocono 350. The only difference, obviously, being that Saturday’s race is 130 laps and Sunday’s 140.

Pocono is a 2.5-mile triangular track known as the “Tricky Triangle” and somewhat of a combination road course and oval track. It also used to annually host an IndyCar race.  In fact, it was designed by 1959 and 1962 Indianapolis 500 winner Rodger Ward. Turn 1 has 14 degrees of banking, Turn 2 nine degrees and Turn 3 six degrees. Each turn has its own nickname. The first Cup Series race held at Pocono was the 1974 Purolator 500 won by the legendary Richard Petty.

Philippine-licensed online gambling revenue was the only vertical in growth mode during the first quarter of 2020, according to new (and somewhat suspect) stats from the country’s gambling regulator.

Figures released this week by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) show overall gaming revenue hit P60b (US$1.2b) in the three months ending March 31, virtually unchanged from the same period last year. That would be an impressive feat, given the impact of COVID-19 on the local gaming industry, but it seems somebody at PAGCOR forgot to check their sums.

The PAGCOR stats show brick-and-mortar casino revenue of P53b, up around half-a-billion from Q1 2019. But the 2020 figure has been goosed by an apparently accidental double-counting of the P7.6b generated by the PAGCOR-operated Casino Filipino business.

The PAGCOR-licensed privately-run casinos in Manila’s Entertainment City gaming zone reported revenue of nearly P33.5b in Q1 2020, down from P39.8b last year, reflecting the mid-March closure of land-based gambling operations due to COVID-19.

Online gambling – at least, the government-run variety – is finally coming the Canadian province of Alberta.

This week, the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission (AGLC) announced that it had signed a deal with NeoPollard Interactive (NPi) to ‘build and maintain’ the province’s long-delayed legal online gambling platform. The deal is for an initial seven-year term with “an extension of up to 12 years possible.”

NPi is a joint venture of lottery mainstays Pollard Banknote and NeoGames that currently powers the online offering of the state lotteries in Michigan, New Hampshire and Virginia. NPi GM Liz Siver said her company was “honored” to have been selected by AGLC and expressed confidence that the online partnership “will help generate incremental revenues to benefit all Albertans.”

Alberta has taken its time arriving at this moment, having been publicly mulling venturing into digital operations for the past five years without much in the way of tangible forward progress. This March, AGLC admitted that its online offering wouldn’t likely make its debut until “mid-2021.”

Gambling is losing its lustre as an immoral activity among Americans, despite conservatives’ view of gambling taking on a more pejorative flavor.

A new Gallup poll found that 71% of Americans view gambling as ‘morally acceptable’ while just 27% viewed gambling as ‘morally wrong.’ The ‘acceptable’ score is three points higher than the 2019 survey and the highest on record since Gallup began conducting the survey in 2003.

Only birth control (90%), alcohol (86%), divorce (77%) and sex between an unmarried man and woman (72%) reported higher ‘acceptable’ scores in the 2020 survey, which queried 1,028 adults via telephone (70% mobile, 30% landline) in the period spanning May 1-13.

Gambling’s score continues to improve with time, having scored only 67% in the morally acceptable column just four years ago. The ‘morally wrong’ score was unchanged from that 2016 survey, although it was down four points from 2019, which represented a three-point rise from 2018.

Just over a week ago, the American Gaming Association (AGA) issued a call for cashless transactions in casinos to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 and payment modernization in general, to facilitate the setting of spending limits amongst many other improvements.

Upon reading the AGA’s PR, I immediately got in touch with Matt Dickson of Bitboss.io, a professional innovating at the intersection of the gambling industry and BitcoinSV (BSV) blockchain technology.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwGSS66x2D0?feature=oembed]

Dickson and I met and conducted an interview together for the first time at G2E Vegas 2019 and we met again at CoinGeek London 2020 after he delivered a fantastic presentation. From our first meet, I admired Dickson’s vision, foresight and spirit, sure that one day we would see his technology spread across the gambling industry space. 

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.

Don’t miss out on all of the latest announcements. Our Press Release section is updated constantly.

Booming Games is now live on the E-Play24 brands in Italy.

Booming Games is now live with E-Play24, one of the most popular online gaming operators with the largest number of commercial brands in Italy. Thanks to this new partnership, the Vegas section of E-Play24 platform will benefit from Booming complete gaming content portfolio with more than 60 HTML5 slot games including popular titles like Booming Seven Deluxe, VIP Filthy Riches, Gold Vein and latest release Show Master. Booming Games release up to two new games per month that will be available to all brands. Soon to be released are Burning Classics, Howling Wolves and Tiki Wins.