After a promising start, the second edition of the XFL proved to be as cursed as the first, seeing a fast decline in ratings, shutting down due to Covid-19 and ultimately declaring bankruptcy. With the league now for sale, MyBookie is asking punters who they think will swoop in and try their luck on another season with the doomed brand.

For some context, the league is expected to be sold sometime this August. Whoever purchases the league from majority shareholder Vince McMahon, who also owns the majority of the WWE, will gain all of its assets and debts, including a lawsuit from former CEO Oliver Luck, who claims either McMahon or the league better pay him the $23.8 million he’s owed.

Thanks to court filings, we know that as many as 20 interested parties will pony up the cash for this league, and MyBookie has Disney/Fox as the favorite. The deal makes some sense for the House of Mouse, as anything Disney touches seems to turn to gold, and it gives them great content for their ABC network, as well as Disney+.

But if not them, then perhaps the NFL could pick up the league. They are the next leading contender, and it makes sense for them too. A lower budget, development league alternative to the big Sunday game could work out nicely.

Last week, I looked into the three different ways we can communicate in the workplace, and when each is likely to work best. But choosing the right way to communicate is still a far cry from knowing how to communicate effectively. And the last thing you want is to be wasting people’s time when you’re all trying to get a job done. This week, we’ll be looking at how to make the most of your interactive communications.

If you’ll recall, interactive communication is a back and forth, exemplified by one on ones, team meetings and private messaging. Done well, this is the heart of how you get things decided and accomplished in an organization. But done poorly, and you’re wasting a massive amount of time, effort and money.

The informal chat

An office culture is built on the little chats we have as we pass each other in the hallways, the water cooler talk, and for Washington’s football team, what happened in the stairways. They don’t typically add as much value as formal meetings can, but they help reinforce a culture and can occasionally lead to Eureka! moments that lead to real innovation.

With preparations underway for the U.S. Open tennis at Flushing Meadow, the loss of Stan Wawrinka and Rafael Nadal would cast an immediate shadow over a tournament that has courted controversy from the moment it was announced.

With the rumoured withdrawal of Rafael Nadal, the certain lack of a recooperating Roger Federer and now the news that Stan Wawrinka has been training on clay courts, the U.S. Open at the end of August looks set to be without some of its brightest stars.

Players who are playing in the Grand Slam event should, by now, be training on hard courts, perfecting those booming forehands and nailing down that first-serve percentage. Maybe nailing it up might be a better term, but you know what we mean. They need to be sharp, focused and ready for the action at Flushing Meadow.

The reveal that came as part of a typically honest Stan Wawrinka Instagram story that the Swiss superstar has been practicing with Roland Garros 2020 tennis balls on a clay court all but confirms that he’ll be missing from the line-up in the United States too.

Entrepreneurs and innovators who believe that California’s Silicon Valley may not be the best option have an alternative, as long as they don’t mind colder winters. A couple of years ago, after realizing that its economy was lagging behind others, Rhode Island launched an initiative designed to attract innovation to the New England State. In 2018, Governor Gina Raimondo proposed a bond worth $20 million to set up innovation campuses across the state, fully embracing the “if you build it, they will come” mentality. She wasn’t wrong, and Rhode Island has made a lot of progress toward becoming an East Coast innovation hub ever since. 

That same year, IBM happened to visit the state when traveling around the East Coast on a quest to find a place for a new IBM Alpha Zone accelerator. However, the state wasn’t even on the company’s mind – they had been looking at New York City and Boston, Massachusetts, and, either because they took a wrong turn or because they wanted to do some sightseeing (it was actually to attend a cybersecurity conference, according to the official story), ended up in Newport, Rhode Island.

Because of the state’s new accelerator program, and IBM on the hunt for a place to call home, it seemed to be a match made in heaven. It took only a few months for the tech giant to team up with MassChallenge, another accelerator program, the University of Rhode Island and Brown University to create the Innovation Campus Initiative (ICI), which resulted from “sheer coincidence,” according to the program’s director, Pete Rumsey.

Receiving $2.5 million through the state bond program, the ICI led to the creation of the RIHub, which is now fulfilling the vision established through the initiative. It acts as an incubator, an accelerator and mentor, and is preparing to include innovation-geared events, as well. While other areas of the U.S. are struggling to attract entrepreneurs and startups, Rhode Island has been able to accomplish a lot in just two years. 

Provided there are no last-minute surprises, Malta-based sports gambling and iGaming operator Tipico hopes to branch out into the U.S. soon, targeting New Jersey as its first market. The company is waiting for regulators to sign off on its license request and, if it’s received, it will have the support of Scientific Games (SG). The two companies have entered a deal that will see Tipico’s iGaming solutions powered by the OpenGaming product suite, offered through SG subsidiary SG Digital, according to an announcement (in pdf) made by SG yesterday.

The new partnership will see SG deliver the Open Gaming System platform, as well as more than 2,000 games. These include both in-house and third-party titles, and SG’s solutions have already found success with other iGaming providers in the Garden State. As long as Tipico can secure the license, it plans on introducing its platform sometime this fall. 

SG Digital’s senior VP for gaming, Dylan Slaney, says of the new partnership, “Tipico’s decision to select OpenGaming to power its new digital casino once again demonstrates the quality of our proposition, and reaffirms our position as a leading supplier in the state of New Jersey. We’re thrilled to be working with the team at Tipico and look forward to providing them with all the support to ensure that together we launch a successful offering.”

Tipico has approached the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement to request its license, which would be operated as a sub-license under Atlantic City’s Ocean Casino Resorts. The company is also working with digital marketing company Digilant to develop a launch strategy, and sees Atlantic City as a springboard for further expansion into other areas of the U.S.

While casino markets in certain parts of the world are still walking on eggshells as they try to recover from the blow dealt at the hands of the coronavirus, other areas are already beginning to catch their breath. The U.S., Macau and the Philippines can’t be included in the latter group because they all three are only slowly getting back on their feet – the U.S. has even fallen a couple of times as it tried to recover. However, other countries, such as Malaysia and Cambodia, are starting to show positive signs of being well on their way to perfect health, and could be back in action before too much longer.

Resorts World Genting (RWG), the Malaysia-based casino resort operated by Genting Malaysia, started to allow gamblers back in on June 19. Since then, activity has continued to ramp up and, more recently, the resort’s hotel capacity has gone from 2,000 to 4,000 in order to meet the greater demand. July has been particularly strong for the property and the turnout reflects levels of over 50% what they were before the coronavirus pandemic forced RWG to shut down on March 18.

Financial services firm CGS-CIMB prepared a note on Genting Malaysia’s return, adding that both VIP and mass gaming are seeing substantial growth. There are still travel restrictions in place that prevent international gamblers from making a trip to the resort, but RWG has always relied heavily on the local gambling market, so the impact from a lack of global gambling hasn’t been that great. The financial firm adds, “Typically, some 70% to 80% of Resorts World’s visitor arrivals are locals, and there has been pent up demand for domestic tourism and gaming post-MCO (Movement Control Order). Hence, we believe RWG’s business will perform better than other casinos in the region that are more dependent on international visitors.”

In Cambodia, according to Inside Asian Gaming (IAG), NagaWorld is now fully operational – at least those areas that aren’t on the build-out list. NagaCorp’s massive gaming resort property was allowed to launch VIP table games and slots starting July 7 and then, as of July 18, was given permission to open the main gaming floor. With that, Naga1 and Naga2 are back in business and moving full speed ahead toward 100% recovery.

Online gambling operators need server solutions that work consistently, and most importantly when business picks up. That was a focus of the panel Karl Davies-Barrett, Global Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft Azure, sat on during the SiGMA Asia Digital conference, and our Stephanie Towers spoke with him after the event to gain more insight.

Davies-Barrett was happy with the way the conference went, and happily summed up some of the conversation for us. “It was a great discussion on a technical level, and it was nice to drill into the details of the challenges that gaming is facing,” he said. “You know whether they’re coming from compliance or just offering good customer service, it was all about data and was all about the throughputs, how to have a reliable platform, and it was just interesting to understand good architecture. It’s one thing to have good tools, but it’s how you use those tools. And the third takeaway was the openness that’s required, this portability of your solutions to go from on-premises, to cloud, and back again.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7Af5Ov0Aw8?feature=oembed]

Microsoft has increasingly embraced the gambling sector, and Towers asked what Davies-Barrett has learned from our side of the fence. “So we have a lot of opportunity here, because you know, we do have not just cloud solutions for infrastructure, but for data provisioning,” he said. “We have open interfaces for our databases, such as Cosmos DB, where customers can come load up their data, then they can interrogate it with machine learning models which they train using Python. I think the key takeaway here is the openness of our platform. it’s an open source. cloud solution platform, and so that’s not kind of creating a vendor lock-in and it creates comfort. And the second area is the global scalability that Microsoft provides, you know we have over 54 data centres across the world, so an operator can literally pick and choose where do they want to deploy their solutions.”

On average, states that have legalized sports gambling are 25% richer than they were prior to introducing the activity. This is the takeaway from research conducted for the American Gaming Association (AGA), which revealed that illegal sportsbooks have already lost a quarter of their revenue in the U.S. as gamblers move from offshore sports gambling ops to legal bookmakers. Given that the coronavirus brought a halt to all major sports action in the U.S. for several months, that number could have been – and will be – much higher going forward.

The AGA, the gaming industry’s biggest lobbyists on Capitol Hill, had Heart + Mind Strategies conduct the survey, and the findings show that gamblers are doing exactly what legalization proponents had asserted all along. Gamblers are going to gamble, no matter what, but they would prefer to do it legally. According to Bill Miller, the president and CEO of AGA, We’ve known for a long time that Americans like to bet on sports. This research affirms their interest in moving toward the protections of the legal market.”

The survey was reportedly carried out with 3,451 participants between last December and this past January. In addition to the 25% attrition seen by the offshore bookies, legal online sportsbooks saw their take increase by 12%. That, however, was apparently slightly offset by a 3% increase in offshore gambling spending, most likely as this segment offered greater incentives to hold onto its market share.

Part of the reason for the transition to legal sports gambling channels was due to the increased level of confidence gamblers felt when dealing with state-approved operations. 25% of the respondents indicated that this was the main impetus for the switch, while 20% indicated that they were just becoming aware that legal options existed. Another 19% stated that they simply preferred to use a regulated sportsbook.

Late-night gamblers at the Tropicana Atlantic City were treated to a little more than just some action on the slots and tables. After New Jersey allowed gambling venues to reopen on July 2 following the coronavirus shutdown, casinos have slowly begun to get things going, operating at greatly reduced capacities and under strict guidelines. All those controls, however, couldn’t stop a fight from breaking out at the casino and, as a result, three men were stabbed, and four people were arrested.

According to The Press of Atlantic City, everything went haywire at around 3 AM Monday morning after a fight broke out on the casino floor. What led to the altercation hasn’t been revealed, but, in the ensuing chaos, three men were attacked, one of whom suffered life-threatening injuries. All three were taken to the AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center, City Campus for treatment. No update was given on the critical patient’s condition.

As troopers arrived to restore order, they quickly arrested three individuals, adding a fourth when they charged one of the stabbing victims for crimes, as well. Three of those arrested are from New York – Jabari Cummings and Tyevon Walker of Brooklyn and Shaun Laney of Machias – and one, Delroy McNeil, is from Cary, North Carolina. They now face charges that could see some of them spend the next decade or two behind bars.

30-year-old Cummings is being charged with possession of a weapon for unlawful purposes, unlawful possession of a weapon, aggravated assault, cocaine possession, criminal attempt homicide and evidence tampering. 32-year-old McNeil, one of the stabbing victims, is looking at the same charges, minus the cocaine possession and evidence tampering. Laney and Walker, 25 and 22 years old, respectively, were charged with robbery. All four are now in Atlantic County jail while the investigation continues.

Online gambling operator Betsson reported record revenue in the second quarter despite sports betting’s contribution falling more than one-third due to COVID-19.

Figures released Tuesday show the Stockholm-listed Betsson generated revenue of SEK1.53b (US$172.8m) in the three months ending June 30, one-fifth higher than the same period last year and a new all-time company record. Operating income improved 10.5% to SEK217.7m while net income rose 12% to SEK193m.

The casino vertical reported revenue rising 40% year-on-year to SEK1.28b, pushing casino’s share of the overall pie up 12 points to 84%. Mobile channels accounted for 72% of the casino bounty, and the vertical reported growth across all regions.

The pandemic-related halt of most major sports events pushed betting revenue down 34% year-on-year to SEK226.5m, reducing sports’ share of overall revenue to just 15%. While betting turnover was down ‘only’ 22%, betting margins fell nearly one full point to 6.9%. When it rains…

Oklahoma’s tribal sports betting plans have been put on hold after the state’s top court said the governor had exceeded his authority.

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Supreme Court issued a 7-1 ruling striking down the gaming compacts Gov. Kevin Stitt signed with two Native American tribes in April. The Court ruled that Stitt lacked the authority “to bind the State with respect to the new tribal gaming compacts with the Comanche Nation and Otoe-Missouria Tribes.”

Stitt’s deals with the two tribes – which allowed them to offer on-site sports betting, house-banked card and table games and to build new casinos off tribal lands – were immediately attacked by other state officials, including Attorney General Mike Hunter, who claimed Stitt was both exceeding his authority and undermining the legislature’s.

While Stitt’s plans received the blessing of the federal Department of the Interior, they caused a rift with the state’s other gaming tribes, with which Stitt was fighting in court over gaming compact renewals. The Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association viewed Stitt’s tactics as a divide-and-conquer effort aimed at neutering their collective efforts at renegotiating these compacts.

It takes a lot to make a TV series about poker, but in most shows, the arrangements of a set, lights, cameras and plenty of action on a well-lit table surrounded by professional players and with presenters and commentators in place, it’s a game with safety nets everywhere.

If the action is bad, the commentary can fill in the gaps. If the commentary is a little quiet, the presenters can add some razzamatazz to proceedings to make the action of one table of poker players seem all-encompassing and larger than life.

It’s much harder to do that when the TV show is taking place inside a house of just four players.

The premise to 2 Months 2 Million is a simple one. Four players work together in an online poker ‘grind house’ to make $2 million in two months. Airing on G4TV – it’s real, we swear – the ‘grinders’ in question were Jay Rosenkrantz, Dani Stern, Brian Roberts and Emil Patel. The four are a good combination and it’s easy to see why they work well together.

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

This week’s 3M Open outside of Minneapolis is one of a select few since the coronavirus restart on the PGA Tour that will be played when it was originally scheduled to be played. However, a handful of big-name golfers – new world No. 1 Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau and Tiger Woods to name four – are skipping the tournament because the new schedule overall put it in a bad spot.

The prestigious Memorial Tournament, won by Rahm, was held last week and had a stacked field. Then next week is the big-money World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational in which anyone who is anyone will play. Ditto the following week with the first Grand Slam event of the year, the PGA Championship from San Francisco. The high-level players on the PGA Tour don’t usually play four weeks in a row if they can help it.

The 3M Open also has one of the smaller purses on Tour at $6.6 million. The event is going to lose up to $3 million in revenue with no fans on the course. The tournament debuted only last year at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minnesota, and then-rookie Matthew Wolff won in just his third professional start in the first regular PGA Tour event in the state since 1969. The Twin Cities had hosted a Champions Tour event for a couple of decades.

Quebec’s provincial gambling monopoly is adding live betting to its online sports betting offering, although federal rules mean you still have to combine live bets into a parlay wager.

On Tuesday, Loto-Quebec’s Mise-o-jeu online sports betting product began offering the ability to place live wagers, marking the first time the provinc’s Espace-jeux gambling site has allowed betting on a game that has already started. The new product will be available for virtually all sports on the site’s current roster.

The live bets on offer will primarily reflect existing pre-game markets, so bettors shouldn’t expect some of the more exotic wagering options available via European online bookmakers. So, in-play okay for game winner, total points scored or which team takes more shots on net – this is Canada, after all – but no bets on which player will be next to score or get sent to the penalty box.

What’s more, Canada’s federal government has yet to legalize single-game wagers, so customers must combine a minimum of two live bets into a single wager, just as they currently do for pre-match betting.