Sporting brand partnerships are important for growth in both sectors and are often an indication of the wider growth of any industry, so it’s good news that Poker Central and broadcaster NBC have confirmed their collaboration for another two years until 2022.

The partnership has already led to broadcasts of the popular poker series of the U.S. Poker Open, Super High Roller Bowl and Poker Masters events, each of them becoming a prestigious part of the poker calendar’s schedule over the last few years. The partnership between Poker Central and NBC has been in place for three years, coming into effect as it did in 2017.

The Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) has really captured a niche audience that for many years was offered crumbs from a vastly spread high roller circuit. Different formats, brands and re-structured formats confused audiences and made the game of poker at an elite level less of an attractive proposition, but hands like this 2015 SHRB one featuring Tom Marchese and Daniel Negreanu are a reason why Poker Central and PokerGO have managed to grab a big audience share in the poker industry.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-0BiB4HtrQ?feature=oembed]

Just in time for the restart of three major sports leagues in the U.S., two sports gambling giants are ready to put up lines in Illinois. The Ilinois Gaming Board has issued temporary operating permits to DraftKings and FanDuel, who are now the latest to be preparing for a launch in the state. Another, William Hill, should get its license before the end of the month, which would be about the same time of the NBA and MLB regular-season reboots. 

MLB, which is already holding Spring Training games, will see its regular season start on July 23, and the NBA will follow on July 30. The NHL will follow on August 1, and the possibility of being able to offer odds on all three has to be relieving some of the pressure felt by the sportsbooks. Until now, they have only been able to put up lines on sports like soccer’s Bundesliga, Premier League and MLS, and the limited PGA golf action that has been found. 

DraftKings and FanDuel almost didn’t have a shot at entering the legal Illinois sports gambling market. Thanks to a “bad actor” clause included in the legislation, operators that were called out by the state’s attorney general for operating in a grey area years ago were not going to be allowed in for 18 months. That all changed when a loophole was uncovered, which DraftKings took full advantage of when it signed a deal with Casino Queen. The sportsbook will operate under a license officially controlled by Crown IL Gaming LLC and FanDuel operates as Betfair Interactive U.S. LLC in a partnership with Boyd Gaming. Both companies join BetRivers, Penn National Gaming – which has a deal with Barstool Sports – and Pointsbet to launch legal sports gambling in the state. 

Illinois had also added an in-person registration requirement in the sports gambling laws, but that has been rescinded per an executive order signed by the state’s governor, J.B. Pritzker. As a result, gambling fans can now register and wager online, which is going to prove to be extremely beneficial to the success of the Illinois sports gambling market. Online wagers have already been shown to produce more action than in-person wagers at sportsbooks, and now, more than ever, all states with legal sports gambling need to be able to generate as much income as possible to recover from the coronavirus.

Being able to travel and see the world is always an awesome experience. If you can get paid to do it, it gets even better. While it’s not always easy to pack up and head to a new country, the introduction of more remote employment opportunities could prove to be a huge plus. Several countries are taking advantage of the increase in remote employment and are given those looking for a change in scenery extra incentives to temporarily relocate, while still being able to maintain their work responsibilities.

One of these countries is Barbados. Imagine working from a laptop while running your toes through the white sand on the Caribbean island nation’s beaches. The country is offering a “12-month Barbados Welcome Stamp,” which gives non-residents the opportunity to live there for up to a year. Given the extremely low number of coronavirus cases – only 105 in total and only seven currently active – this could be a dream come true for many people. 

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley explained with the introduction of the program, “We recognize more people are working remotely, sometimes in very stressful conditions, with little option for vacation. Our new 12-month Barbados Welcome Stamp is a visa that allows you to relocate and work from one of the world’s most beloved tourism destinations.”

Greece is also taking the initiative to give traveling nomads the chance at hanging out in the Mediterranean a little economic break. Taxes on transportation, such as air, rail and buses, have been reduced from 24% to 13%, which can add up to be serious savings. Greece has been able to manage the outbreak of COVID-19 better than many countries, according to international health organizations, which will reduce the risk of contagion. However, U.S. travelers should be warned – they may need to wait, given the number of active cases in the U.S. 

The NBA, NHL and MLB are about to reboot their seasons, all of which were canceled due to the coronavirus. MLS has already gotten underway, becoming the first major U.S. sports organization to take to the field. As all of these start to get rolling, the NFL should be next, if it can launch in September, and sports fans will finally be able to get their fix. Sportsbooks are just as anxious as anyone to see sports action come back to life, but many are about to go into the market completely blind. Some even refer to the upcoming sports gambling activity as a complete crapshoot.

For generations, putting up lines has been a fairly routine activity – oversimplifying things, there are two teams, one viewed as having better chances to beat the other. Parlay bets came in and added a new component that livened things up a bit and attracted a lot of attention. However, the coronavirus is forcing sportsbooks to take a look at how they set up their lines, as things like empty stadiums, positive coronavirus tests for athletes and much more impact the outcome of a game. According to Nick Bogdanovich of William Hill U.S., sportsbooks can expect what’s coming to be a “complete crapshoot with all the unknowns.” He adds, “We’re just going to have to react as fast as humanly possible. It’s going to be a wild time.”

Sportsbooks base their positions on analysis and instincts – two concepts that are intrinsically intertwined in the sports gambling world. However, it’s difficult to provide proper analysis when there has never been a situation like the one sports is currently facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That changes the panorama completely, and oddsmakers will have to be prepared to make adjustments on the fly in order to stay ahead.

The director of operations at DraftKings, Johnny Avello, shares Bogdanovich’s concerns. He asserts, “The totals are a little tricky. We don’t know what that’s going to be like without fans in the stands. Is that going to make [teams] score more than they would normally score because they are focused? Or is it going to be less because their momentum isn’t driven [by the roar of a crowd?] That is something we’re going to keep a close eye on.”

This is probably the last time talk of the merger between Eldorado Resorts and Caesars Entertainment will need to be had. Last Friday, New Jersey gaming regulators signed off on the $17-billion deal, the last approval needed to see the arrangement come to a close. Not wasting any time, the two casino giants signed the final paperwork just one business day later, melding into the largest casino company in the U.S. as of yesterday. Try to visit the former Eldorado Resorts website automatically directs viewers to the Caesars site, where they are greeted with the aptly-stated phrase, “Welcome to the empire.

Going forward, Eldorado will no longer exist, with the new company taking the Caesars name, but with former Eldorado executives, including CEO Tom Reeg (now referred to as the CEO of Caesars), running the show. Across the globe, the new Caesars has a total of 55 gambling properties, including eight on the Las Vegas Strip. Some of these will have to be let go in order to facilitate the major reductions in expenses – up to $500 million – Reeg wants to see. In addition, venues will need to be sold off in order to meet requirements established by gaming regulators in certain states who feel that the company would have too much control. Certain deals to offload some properties are already in the works. 

Reeg says of the completion of the merger, “We are pleased to have completed this transformative merger, thus making us the premier leader in gaming and hospitality. We look forward to executing on the numerous opportunities ahead to create value for all stakeholders. Additionally, we are pleased to welcome all of our Team Members to the combined company, and we look forward to implementing all of the strategic initiatives that will position the company for continued growth.”

As with any large merger, there will definitely be speed bumps along the way. Specifically, Eldorado has been used to doing things a certain way, as has Caesars. Now, mentalities and business policies will have to shift, and Caesars’ culture will have to be assimilated into that of Eldorado. Employees will have to learn new ways to do their jobs and will have to subscribe to different theories on what is important in making a business successful.

Ever since I first covered 888 here back in March 2015, I’ve been an 888 bull. I still believe the company is fundamentally sound as gaming companies go. I still believe in its management. And I still believe that once the dust settles from all the mess that’s going on now in the world and in the United Kingdom specifically – COVID-19, a (still) potential no-deal Brexit, and probably turmoil in the abused currency markets – 888 will emerge stronger, and will even end up acquiring many of its more indebted competitors who I do not believe will make it out of the current morass in one piece.

What I am unsure of and can no longer measure with any confidence, is the appropriate value for the stock. That may sound like a copout, but with broad-based rolling economic shutdowns, unstable and unpredictable government responses to 2nd or 3rd or 4th waves or whatever is coming at us real or manufactured, and money-printing without any precedent, to feign knowledge of what reasonable capital values may be in this environment is nothing short of voodoo. All the projections put out by companies about growth trends, new markets and whatever else, has little to no basis anymore.

We got our post shutdown bounce. It was huge. Consumer-facing stocks like 888 could still rocket from here, but I wouldn’t be willing to bet on it anymore.

Beyond all the obvious turmoil, 888 and others will have an additional problem and burden. The U.K. gambling industry generally will continue to play the role of piñata for the U.K.’s problems. That is unavoidable. Taxes will likely be raised still further and restrictions on gamers will intensify. Poverty, entirely due to locking down the country and disrupting normal life, will be blamed on gambling addiction, which has a good chance of actually rising as unemployment rises, simply because people are bored and depressed and tend to gravitate to unhealthy patterns when these circumstances arise. This is just human nature and has little to do with “predatory gambling companies”.

Gambling is part of the social fabric of the Philippines. But with most casinos closed, and online gambling not an option for the majority of the country, residents have turned to the old favorites: cockfighting and mahjong. And police aren’t happy about it.

On July 18, Vice Mayor Jolly Taberner, Maconacon town in Isabela, two police officers and six others were arrested for playing mahjong in Tuguegarao, Cagayan. The group were apprehended at 2:50pm in a private home.

Besides the arrests, police also collected two mahjong sets, tables, chairs, a .45 caliber pistol and P3,310, or roughly $67. The group will be charged with both illegal gambling and violating quarantine protocols.

Cagayan Valley, which has a total population of nearly 3.5 million, has registered a total of 206 confirmed cases of Covid-19.

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

Nolimit City cuts the ribbon on Lithuania with Cbet.lt partnership

Addressing the ever-growing landscape of exciting markets in the EU has been on the agenda for the Malta based supplier for a while now. The partnership is the first from a healthy list of upcoming markets ahead. Lithuania sees a robust gambling regime which bolster a healthy forecast in sight.

Bitcoin was always designed to be a perfect match for the gambling industry, with it’s ability to conduct cost efficient and fast payments, while also providing an immutable audit trail that regulators love, and data networking opportunities for enterprising developers. CG London was a great exhibition of this, and it brought out non-executive chairman of Clarion Events Michael Caselli, who reflected on gambling’s history with Bitcoin.

Our very own Rebecca Liggero Fontana bumped into Caselli at the event and asked what brought him out. “It’s right down the road, it’s the ideal location for me,” he said. “Gaming industry’s here, it’s a huge global hub and I thought I better come down because I know a lot of other guys from the industry wanted to come down, and are coming down. And what’s interesting, anything blockchain is exciting, there’s got to be an application that we’re looking for now. A lot of companies are innovating and trying to find their applications for anything blockchain, and Bitcoin SV is just a really great platform with good throughput, good transaction volumes, the ability to do quite a lot of stuff on the application layers that you can’t do on some of the coins, and it just makes a lot of sense that the gaming industry is coming down and I’m here to support.”

Bitcoin SV, having finally unleashed the power of unlimited scaling on the blockchain, was impressing plenty of visitors at the conference, and Liggero Fontana asked what potential Caselli saw in it. “Decentralized solutions are good for a number of different things like exchanges,” he said. “Trust is an issue, so where there’s ever a trust issue for any application, then there’s a good solution for that. Trust issues may exist in countries which are yet to regulate, which don’t have a regulator that’s overseeing what’s going on, and then players could really self-regulate what’s happening by using an immutable blockchain.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh2a1bRvlZw?feature=oembed]

For those who have been keeping track of the integrated resort (IR) developments in Japan, many were expecting to see the national Diet introduce the gambling framework to be used for the structuring of relationships between host cities and casino operators by July 26. However, the Basic Plan, as it’s called, won’t be ready within a week. It might be ready sometime next month, but there exists the possibility that at least a couple of more months will be needed, which is going to further slow down the process of getting legal casinos up and running in the country. The Basic Plan is yet another victim of the coronavirus. 

Of the different regions that stand out as the most likely to host one of the first three IRs in Japan, Osaka is one that has been slow to develop its framework as it waits on the Basic Plan. The prefecture will now have to wait even longer, as the Sankei Shimbun media outlet reports that the national framework is being reworked once again. This time, lawmakers are drafting language to provide guidance on dealing with global pandemics, such as COVID-19, and other infectious diseases. The additional policies will cover how to respond to major health issues, as well as the rights of the IRs as a result of a pandemic. 

The plan was to have everything in place for local governments to start submitting their applications to the national government sometime during the first half of next year. However, with each delay that presents itself, the possibility of the overall timeframe for development gets skewered. The newest change to the schedule won’t help, and it isn’t clear how quickly the Basic Policy can be finalized for distribution in light of the new additions.

The Basic Policy is an important part of the plan to bring casinos to Japan; arguably, at this point, the most important part. Without it, local governments don’t know how to proceed with drafting their own rules and regulations and can only prepare an overview of how they believe things will evolve. The Japanese government, despite the delays, still believes things can be rolled out quickly enough to see the first IRs come to the country sometime during the next five years or so; however, that goal is more than likely just out of reach unless there is serious forward progress made in the next couple of months. The idea of having a casino open before 2024, as had been initially expected, has already been blown out of the water, and it’s looking more like Japan’s gambling market won’t see its first IRs until at least 2027. 

Swedish gambling operator Svenska Spel took a turn for the worse in the second quarter of 2020 after a certain virus brought a halt to major retail operations.

On Monday, the state-run Svenska Spel reported generating revenue of SEK1.64b (US$183m) in the three months ending June 30, down nearly one-fifth from the same period last year. Operating profit fell 11.2% to SEK473m and net profit slid 18.4% to SEK340m.

The quarter began just after Svenska Spel shut its four Casino Cosmopol venues due to COVID-19, entirely eliminating that revenue stream. The Vegas slots business remained active but at a reduced capacity as many restaurants chose to close down temporarily. The two land-based units reported revenue falling 61% year-on-year to SEK170m.

The Sport & Casino unit reported revenue falling 37% to SEK291m, primarily due to the pandemic-related halt of major sports events. The company claims this decline began to abate in May and things were more or less back to normal by June. The sports decline was also partially offset by higher online casino, poker and bingo revenue.