Pennsylvania-licensed online casinos generated revenue of $50m in June but the nascent online market suffered its first decline due to the resumption of land-based gaming operation.

Figures released Thursday by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board showed the state’s gaming operators generated combined revenue of $132.6m in June, slightly less than half the sum they generated in the same month last year.

June saw all but one of the state’s 12 casino operators restart their brick-and-mortar business following their forced closure in March due to COVID-19. Rivers Casino Philadelphia is the lone land-based holdout but the property announced this week that it will reopen to the public on Friday (17).

Rivers will face reduced hours and capacity upon reopening, factors that helped limit the other 11 operators to total slots revenue of $62.4m in June, down 69% year-on-year. Land-based table games fared even worse, falling 83% to $11.7m.

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

It’s a “short week” for NASCAR drivers off running the All-Star Race in Bristol on Wednesday as the Cup Series circuit heads to Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth on Sunday for the O’Reilly Auto Parts 500, which was shifted from March 29 due to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s a 3:00pm ET start time for what is scheduled to be the first of two visits to Texas this season: The Texas 500 Round of 8 playoff race is set for October 25.

Both events technically are 501 miles (334 laps; Stages 1&2 are 105 miles each and Stage 3 is 124) as Texas Motor Speedway is a 1.5-mile quad-oval track with 20-degree banking in Turns 1-2 and 24 degrees in Turns 3-4. It’s a similar layout to the speedways in Atlanta and Charlotte, which like Texas are owned by Speedway Motorsports, Inc.

In a nice move, Texas Motor Speedway recently held graduation ceremonies for 23 area high schools this spring – with each graduate getting their diploma (hands free) in “Victory Lane.” This being Texas, the race winner receives a pair of cowboy boots, a white cowboy hat, and a pair of six-shooters to fire off in Victory Lane.

With big games in the Premier League and F.A. Cup this weekend, the action will go a long way to determining who has the chance of lifting trophies at the end of the season.

There are battles at the bottom of the league, titanic tussles at the top and two Wembley F.A. Cup semi-finals to negotiate, but who will come out on top?

Tottenham vs. Leicester City (Saturday, 4pm GMT kick-off)

A flashback to the title race of 2015/16, this time the stakes are slightly lower, but the spirit will be no less combative as Jose Mourinho’s Tottenham Hotspur welcome Brendan Rodgers Leicester City. With Champions League or Europa League spots on the line, this is going to be a tumultuous battle that is not for the feint-hearted.

Russia has its 20th locally licensed online bookmaker as website traffic improves and Moscow’s betting shops begin to reopen following their COVID-19 closure.

Russian sports bettors recently woke to discover Bettery, a new legal online wagering option operating via the web, as well as iOS and Android devices. Bettery is a member of the Bookmakers SRO, one of two rival ‘self-regulatory organizations,’ whose members also include Leon, Marathon, Olimp and Fonbet, Russia’s largest bookmaker.

Bettery is run under License No. 11, which was issued in 2009 to the Moscow-based Atlantic-M LLC. Corporate documents indicate that Atlantic-M is 75% owned by Malfinio Ltd, a Cyprus-based company of equally mysterious provenance.

Russian media outlet The Bell reported in April that attempts to contact Atlantic-M by its listed phone number were answered by an individual who had no clue about any bookmaking activities. The Bell also claimed that the other 25% of Bettery is collectively owned by Stanislav Magomedov, Irina Borodina and Maxim Kiryukhin, who also hold minority positions in Fonbet.

Female problem gamblers in the UK are more likely to be young, working class and from a black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) background, according to new research.

On Wednesday, the UK’s GambleAware problem gambling charity issued a report it commissioned from survey stars YouGov on “the experiences of women and gambling.” The YouGov survey queried 6,190 women and 5,971 men across the UK over a three-week period last autumn to determine their ranking on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI).

The PGSI assigns each individual a score, with 0 indicating individuals whose gambling doesn’t present any problems, while those scoring 1-2 are considered at low-risk for gambling problems, 3-7 indicating moderate risk and individuals scoring 8+ experiencing serious gambling problems.  

The GambleAware survey found 10% of female participants scored 1+, although just 1.9% scored 8+. Both figures were significantly below male participants, who scored 17% and 3.6%, respectively, in those two categories.