In a world where digital is king – especially in the COVID-19 world we are living in today – gambling companies and their customers want cashless, instant transactions. For operators who are open to utilizing digital currencies such as Bitcoin SV, instant, guaranteed transactions are now possible with Gap600’s services.

“We enable instant deposits and payments for cryptocurrency exchanges and payment processors. The payment processors that we service are primarily focused in the gaming industry”, Gap600’s CEO Daniel Lipshitz told CalvinAyre.com.

“With crypto currency in general, payment processors and merchants generally wait a certain amount of time until they accept the transaction. This can result in 10 minutes, half an hour, or sometimes even longer until that transaction is considered confirmed”, he explained.

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After weeks of waiting, not one but three major European football leagues will have live games this weekend, with La Liga and the Coppa Italia tournaments running on the same days as the German Bundesliga.

Bundesliga

In Germany, much of the talk before the lockdown was how close Borussia Dortmund were to Bayern Munich, and how Jadon Sancho, Erling Haaland and Mats Hummels might help the yellow and blacks past their more decorated rivals.

Fast-forward two months and after a 1-0 defeat to Munich, Borussia Dortmund look doomed to finish a distant second place and with Haaland injured, they will rely more on Sancho than ever before, ahead of a summer where they will be lucky to keep him.

South African casino operator Tsogo Sun Gaming (TSG) is looking to enter the online gambling market as its land-based venues deal with COVID-19 shutdowns.  

This week, TSG, which was spun off from the hotel operations of Tsogo Sun Holdings last year, reported revenue of R11.7b (US$708.8m) in the 12 months ending March 31, up a mere 1% from fiscal 2019. Earnings rose 3% to R4b but profits fell 83% to R277m.

The profit decline was largely due to R2b in write-downs on the value of its businesses due to COVID-19. The company, which operates 13 casinos, 23 Galaxy Bingo sites and numerous VSlots halls – offering Limited Payout Machines (LPM) – across South Africa, was already dealing with decreased visitor traffic when it was forced to close all its venues on March 27.

Casinos accounted for the bulk (R7.34b, -2%) of FY20 revenue, with slots accounting for around three-quarters of that total. The LPM segment was up 7% to R1.65b while the bingo vertical produced the biggest percentage gain, rising 10% to R856m.

Spain has lifted the temporary online gambling advertising restrictions it imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, although it’s only a brief respite before the permanent restrictions kick in.

On Wednesday, Spain’s government confirmed that the online gambling marketing limits it imposed on April 1 were being lifted. The government imposed the limits to protect consumers from possibly suffering gambling harm while they were stuck at home with too much time on their hands during the COVID-19 lockdown.

The government claimed that its efforts to minimize gambling harm via these restrictions had been a success and the repeal of these limits is intended to establish a ‘new normal’ as the country emerges from its economic hibernation.

However, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs continues to finalize its plans to impose similar restrictions on a permanent basis. Those plans, details of which were unveiled in February, will restrict gambling ads on radio, TV and online video platforms to a four-hour window starting at 1am, although there’s a carveout for betting ads (with certain content restrictions) during live sports after 8pm.

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has warned online gambling operators to stop permitting customers to fund their accounts via e-wallets that allow credit card gambling.

On Wednesday, the UKGC issued “guidance on credit card payments made through Money Service Businesses (MSBs).” The UKGC apparently felt the need to clarify that when it said it was banning gamblers’ ability to fund their online accounts via credit cards, it wasn’t joking.

The UKGC said the intent of the credit card ban was to “maximize the levels of friction during the process of accessing and using borrowed funds for gambling” to protect consumers from racking up major gambling debts by spending money they didn’t have.

When it launched its credit card gambling consultation last July, the UKGC noted that e-wallets could be used to circumvent a credit card gambling ban, necessitating cooperation between numerous segments of the online payments sector.  

Day Two of the SiGMA-OCE Asia digital conference wrapped up yesterday after having taken a hard look at what is coming for integrated resorts (IR) and the gaming industry in general. The coronavirus has devastated the gaming industry, but has also shown that alternative options can be implemented with relative ease and still adhere to regulatory guidelines. As the world begins to slowly pull itself out of COVID-19’s grasp, some of the temporary solutions that were implemented to overcome the pandemic will most likely turn into permanent fixtures for the gaming industry.

One of the most talked-about subjects on Day Two was the topic of IRs, from Japan to Vietnam and more. The concept of massive entertainment resorts began prior to the coronavirus; however, it is now taking on a whole new light. This is primarily due to the need to offer a wide variety of options for tourists in order to become sustainable over the long term, and the Hoiana IR in Vietnam is going to be at the forefront of how this segment operates.

Hoiana is now in its first phase of development that, when complete, will offer a variety of hotels, gambling options, restaurants and other amenities. The multibillion-dollar project is poised to capture the growing Asian market, with a primary focus on China, South Korea and Japan. Steve Wolstenholme, the group chief operating officer at Hoiana, calls this market “vibrant” and a lot of emphasis is being placed on Asian high rollers to help launch the IR’s success.

Obviously, there is a lot that has to be overcome before Hoiana, and similar IR projects, can reach the level of success they want to see. As social distancing continues to be enforced, traffic at any gaming or entertainment venue is going to lighter than normal, resulting in an uphill struggle for any entity to reach the levels of action they once enjoyed.

The World Series of Poker Main Event isn’t any old tournament. It is often said that it has both the best and the worst players in the world all playing for the title. In 2006, it was a record top prize for the Main Event, an incredible $12,000,000.

It was eye-watering money for the eventual winner, Jamie Gold to win, and while he was backed into the event and would only eventually be entitled to half of the money automatically after a court case prompted his settlement, it was still big, big money.

In the final hand of the event, Gold was up against Dallas man Paul Wasicka, whose pocket tens were ahead of Gold pre-flop. Gold’s queen-nine hit on the flop, however, which is where the action happened.

Pre-flop, it had all been quite friendly, a raise to 1.3 million chips from Wasicka, a call from Gold. It was the same on the flop, although Wasicka’s bet was 1.5m. Gold, however, played what was his trump card in the event, going all-in and relieving himself of the pressure of making any decision at all. Having made his final move in the hand, he was then free to discuss – heads-up as he had so often in the tournament to that point – the hand in detail.

Online gambling operators Betsson and Bethard have been warned and fined by Sweden’s gambling regulator for bonus offer and underage betting violations.

On Wednesday, Sweden’s Spelinspektionen regulatory agency imposed an SEK20m (US$2.16m) penalty on the Stockholm-listed Betsson for two separate violations: selling vouchers good for online play through unauthorized retailers and offering customers a branded Mastercard that violated the market’s bonus offer rules.

In March 2019, Betsson Nordic Ltd began selling online gambling vouchers through 7-11 stores and the Pressbyrån convenience store chain. Neither retailer was authorized by Spelinspektionen to act as a ‘gaming agent’ and the regulator launched an investigation last November.

Betsson countered that the vouchers were part of its deal with gift/prepaid card supplier Convenience Card and thus there was no direct deal between Betsson and either retailer, neither of which Betsson believes were acting as ‘gaming agents’ under Swedish rules. Nevertheless, Betsson subsequently ended its relationship with Convenience Card and ceased such voucher sales.

For the last two years, one word has been associated with partypoker more than any other, and while the MILLIONS live tour has been shelved for now due to the ongoing worldwide pandemic, the online version of partypoker’s MILLION schedule has continued to be a success.

How much of a success it has been, however, might be the subject of speculation after the online brand took the decision this week to restructure how players take each other on in the signature event.

With a hefty $1 million guarantee, the partypoker MILLION hasn’t always reached the numbers its needed to over the past couple of years. With Day 1’s scattered throughout the week, Sunday’s final became something of a dose of normality after playing Day 1 flights that could have been played over your morning coffee as much as your evening meal.

With the previous events being ‘phased’ up from $2.20 entries, there was also a mis-match in terms of aspiration. While many players might think that playing all the way into a million-dollar guarantee event for as little as $2.20 is a dream scenario – and let’s face it, it is – the regular achievement of such an aim wasn’t so viable.

The first poker boom was like a gold rush. The world saw Chris Moneymaker get rich quick, learned they satellite in to a big tournament like he did, and it was off to the races for players and operators alike. But after several years of prosperity, a combination of several factors saw poker slide as a popular vertical.

Now, we’re in the second boom, thanks to a pandemic, a lack of live sports, and millions of people looking for something to do. Online poker rooms are seeing high volumes once again, and industry analysts are split on if this new wave of players will be more sustainable than the first.

To answer that question, we need to look at the reasons the first boom ended, the psychology of the poker player, recreational or not, and innovations that could make the vertical more sustainable long term.

Why did the first poker boom end?

This is a guest contribution by Patrick Thompson, a writer with CoinGeek.com. He interviews Swapzone, a digital currency exchange that has recently adopted the real Bitcoin, and sees maturation in the sector that could mean it’s already primed for adoption from the gambling industry. This article first appeared on CoinGeek.com.

Digital currency exchange aggregator Swapzone recently announced its support for Bitcoin SV. We caught up with their marketing advisory Marija Carola to share with us how Swapzone works, the company’s future plans as well as their insights on the blockchain and digital currency industry.

How does Swapzone work?

We work with [digital currency exchange] service providers directly, aggregate the exchange deals, and showcase them to our users in one interface. The main point of aggregation is giving our users a choice—you can see all the deals available on just one screen, pick the one that suits you, and swap cryptocurrency quickly and easily, without the need to jump from one service to another. The working process, too, is fairly simple—when a user puts down the data on the exchange—say you would like to swap ETH to BSV—we direct the inquiry to the exchange platforms through the APIs, get the responses, sort them out by best rate, and present to you.

Like many other countries considering, or having already implemented, such measures, Mexico wants to start charging a value-added tax (VAT) on digital goods and services offered by foreign-based entities. The 16% SAT Tax, as it’s called, is expected to take effect as of July 1, and would be applicable to all digital transactions and services, including retail sales, content delivery, entertainment and more. Faced with the proposition of having to pay a substantial amount more for online gaming, whether covered by customers or operators, there is a good chance that the country is about to face a withdrawal or slowdown of gaming-related activity, which is going to prove to be counterproductive to the reason for the SAT Tax’s implementation.

The SAT Tax was approved earlier this year and covers all digital services, whether related to B2B or B2C operations. The tax was first discussed last year and didn’t find a lot of opposition as it sought approval. The idea is to create a level playing field between domestic and foreign companies, but questions still remain about how the tax will be applied to online gaming. The country still doesn’t have established online gambling laws specific to iGaming verticals, which is creating confusion and will make the implementation of the tax harder to achieve.

Virtually any digital service is expected to charge the tax. Vistra explained this past February, “Statutory examples of digital services include downloading and/or accessing images, movies, music, text, information, video, gaming (including gambling), ring tones, visualization of online news (but not eBooks or electronic versions of periodicals), traffic, weather, online clubs, dating sites and other multimedia content, distance learning, tests and exercises. Some real-life examples of such services include Netflix, Tinder and the online learning platform Coursera. Financial services, payment services, data storage, and software sales and use are not subject to Mexico’s new [SAT Tax] provision.”

Making things more confusing, and harder on digital operators, is the caveat that certain activity, such as payment services, aren’t taxable. Since only some portions of a transaction will need to be taxed, online platforms have to spend an exorbitant amount of time coding their systems in order to adhere to the new guidelines. If not done right, they could end up paying more than what is required or, worse, not enough, leading to substantial financial penalties.

The news cycle might have mostly moved on, but the Covid-19 pandemic is hardly over. Las Vegas, despite a continuing rise in infections, is still slowly and cautiously reopening, providing more amenities and gambling options to visitors.

Caesars, after seeing a successful reopening weekend at Caesars Palance, the Flamingo and Harrah’s, is now confident enough to also open up gambling operations at the Linq on Friday at 11:00 am.

 “We are encouraged by customer interest and visits, strong demand and the implementation, so far, of our enhanced health and safety protocols,” said Caesars Entertainment CEO Tony Rodio. “This is a new way of operating, and we will continue to evaluate and adjust our procedures to enhance guest and team member comfort and experiences.”

It won’t yet reopen the casino, however. “Our expansion plans will continue to reflect customer demand as well as a focus on properly executing health and safety directives,” Rodio said.

Kiwi women are much greener than men, at least when they travel. This is the revelation of a study performed on the New Zealand travel industry, which showed that women generate fewer greenhouse gas emissions than do men when traveling. The research was conducted by The University of Otago in New Zealand and shared on the Science Direct website.

The study, led by Dr. Carolina Shaw, with assistance from researchers Marie Russell, Michael Keall, Sara MacBride-Stewart, Kristy Wild, Dory Reeves, Rebecca Bentley and Alistair Woodward, looked at transportation data of nearly 50,000 people from 2002 to 2014, using information supplied by the New Zealand Household Travel Survey. The research showed that, despite men traveling by bike twice as much as women, the female segment was more apt to use more diverse forms of travel in general, and generated less greenhouse gas waste.

The group explains in its findings, “Women took more trips, but travelled between 12-17 per cent fewer kilometres per day and were more likely to walk and use public transport than men. Thus, women overall had a more diverse and lower greenhouse gas emission travel profile than men.” They added, “Men are more likely to cycle than women in NZ and cyclists get more physical activity. Nonetheless, analysis across all travel (irrespective of regularity of cycling status) suggests that women use more diverse travel modes and generate lower greenhouse gas emissions than men. Better consideration of the social processes shaping travel is needed to create policy, institutions, programmes and infrastructure that achieve the long-term goals of the transport system, such as increasing cycling and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

The results come almost in tandem with a report on overall greenhouse gas emissions in the country. Statistics New Zealand published a report yesterday that shows changes in the emissions in New Zealand over the past decade. It showed that household emissions have increased by 11.8% over the period, bringing the percentage dangerously close to the same level of 13.2% seen from the manufacturing industry.

Operators have had to adapt to these changing times, but so too have their affiliates. Some verticals are growing rapidly, while others have temporarily shrunken into a fraction of what they once were. Jonathan Edelshaim, General Manager at Natural Intelligence, joined our Becky Liggero Fontana to discuss how affiliates are managing in these COVID times.

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Even with the return of the Bundesliga and South Korean baseball, sports is not the money maker it once was for affiliates. “What we see is certain verticals that are basically dying because there’s zero interest, whether it’s in gaming, like sports betting, lack of events means pretty much, well I’m not going to say zero interest, but much lower interest,” Edelshaim said. “And then there’s some other vertical, some of the FinTech verticals are declining. And then on the other hand he have some stuff that is exploding, that is spiking. We know of the growing interesting for example in the world of poker, online poker that we’ve all experienced lately, and then of course the bingo and casino, but then some other things that people consume more when they’re at home work, like we’ve seen it with the VPN vertical or mail deliveries in specifically that we operate in the U.S.

The way affiliates decide to spend their money has also had to change, as regulators are taking a harder look at some spaces, while others see much better opportunities for the moment. “So I would say it’s obviously becoming a bit more in focus for the companies, for the operators, for the bookies, affiliate marketing as a channel, for various reasons,” he said. “First of some of them need to generate more revenues online because they have to shut down their offline, the land-based facilities. So they have to focus more and more budgets, and generate more revenues online. And then they need to make sure, even more nowadays, that those affiliate marketing, affiliate marketers, are compliant, are working according to all regulations and are not missing out on anything, because the regulators are even more, you know focused and forcing them to do things by the book.”

Casino operator Silver Heritage put up a good front and made everything sound like it was able to maintain its footing while also actively exploring ways to offload some of its assets. However, it was recently forced to admit that things weren’t as solid as expected and Silver Heritage, at the behest of its primary lender, brought in administrators last month who are working at keeping the company from going under. The first casualty has now been recorded as professional services firm KPMG cleans house, and the company’s secretary has resigned as business operations and procedures are being put under the microscope. More changes are expected to come soon, as well.

Silver Heritage parted ways with Kim Clark “with effect from close of business on 1 June 2020,” according to a filing (in pdf) with the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) yesterday. No reason was given for the resignation but, according to Internet data, Clark had been with the company since 2016 and also serves as the co-secretary for a couple of other firms in Australia. It isn’t clear if Clark’s departure was tied to KPMG’s scrutiny of the company, or if the former secretary simply felt that it was time to move on.

In addition to Clark’s departure, Silver Heritage is apparently being forced to give up its corporate address, as well. The ASX filing adds the company’s previous registered address was no longer valid, being replaced by a KPMG-designated one. This is most likely in an effort to ensure all pertinent communications are funneled to Silver Heritage’s administrators and receivers.

Silver Heritage’s primary lender, OCP Asia, brought in the assistance last month to try to keep the company from completely sinking. They are working “closely with all relevant stakeholders to determine the best course of action and to ensure the continuation of the underlying business while strategic options are being explored.” In addition, the receivers are strategizing “with the administrators and the company to sustain business operations whilst evaluating strategic options, including a sale of all or part of the business, to ultimately maximize the value of the company’s assets for its stakeholders.”