Maryland’s casinos may have reopened to the public but their prolonged COVID-19 shutdown deprived the state’s annual budget of nearly $200m.

New figures from the Maryland Lottery & Gaming regulatory agency show the state’s six casino operators generated revenue of $34.9m in June, down from $142.9m in the same month last year, although this is definitely a case of comparing gambling apples to oranges.

As with the rest of the US casino sector, Maryland’s gaming operators were ordered to close their doors in mid-March to slow the spread of COVID-19. The state’s three smaller casinos – Ocean Downs, Hollywood Perryville and Rocky Gap – reopened in mid-June while the bigger operators – MGM’s National Harbor, Live! Casino & Hotel and Horseshoe Baltimore – waited until the final week.

Live!, which reopened to select guests starting June 19 and to the unwashed masses on June 29, led June’s revenue chart with $15.85m. National Harbor, which began operating on an invite-only basis on June 26, ranked second with $8m. Hollywood Perryville, which opened to everyone on June 19, leaped into third place with $3.45m. 

The UK’s leading responsible gambling charity wants banks to do more to enable customers to prevent funding gambling activity via bank cards.

On Tuesday, the GambleAware charity issued a report titled A Blueprint for Bank Card Gambling Blockers, produced in cooperation with the University of Bristol. The report examines the growing trend of financial institutions empowering customers to prevent using a debit or credit card to access products carrying a gambling-related Merchant Category Code (MCC).

The report found that eight financial service firms covering around 60% of the UK’s total personal current accounts now offer blocking tools for certain products. That reportedly leaves around 28m accounts that lack access to these blocking tools.

This is unfortunate, because GambleAware’s report indicates that each of the roughly 500k Britons who have engaged blocking tools to date prevent an average of two to three gambling transactions each month. This amounts to between 390k and 585k total transactions blocked per month.

Australian casino operator Crown Resorts is facing fresh challenges after the state of Victoria imposed a new COVID-19 “hard boundary” around the city of Melbourne.

On Tuesday, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced a new six-week lockdown of Melbourne as the state deals with a surge in new COVID-19 infections. The state reported 191 new infections on Tuesday, a total that surpasses anything in the state’s ‘first wave’ of infections.

The lockdown will take effect at 11:59pm on Wednesday and will result in the closure of most non-essential businesses. Individuals are only allowed to leave their homes for four reasons: to shop for food and supplies, health care and caregiving, outdoor exercise and study or work.

The Crown Melbourne casino announced a ‘staged reopening’ of its hotels and restaurants starting May 31 as Victoria began easing its COVID-19 restrictions. But its gaming floor, which was ordered shut in mid-March, remained off-limits as the state prohibited all gaming venues from reopening to the public.

Online gambling operators licensed by the German state of Schleswig-Holstein have agreed on new self-imposed advertising limits they hope will placate regulators in less tolerant states.

On Tuesday, Schleswig-Holstein’s Ministry of the Interior announced that the German Association for Telecommunications and Media (DVTM) and the Central Association of the German Advertising Industry (ZAW) had agreed on a “self-regulatory model to ensure proportionate nationwide TV advertising of online casino providers” licensed in the state.

Last month, the state of Saarland publicly scolded Schleswig-Holstein for allowing its online casinos to promote their products on TV channels viewable by residents of other states. Germany’s federal drug czar also slammed online casino ads as a threat to the well-being of half-a-million German citizens.

To address these concerns, Schleswig-Holstein’s online casino operators are now pledging to collectively limit their “nationwide free-to-air TV” advertising exposure to an “absolute maximum” of 17,000 minutes per month.

Two more WSOP bracelets have been won across events in both no limit hold’em and PLO8, with Allen Chang and Nathan Gamble winning their first and second bracelets respectively.

Event #5

Allen Chang won his bracelet first, and it was his debut win in a WSOP event, as he negotiated a field of 854 entries to win the $1,000-entry Freezeout event for $161,286. You read that correctly, with no rebuys to worry about in this event, and when players busted, they busted for real.

Hailing from Brooklyn, Chang won the top prize from a huge prizepool of $811,300, which saw just 126 players paid. While rebuys often favour the big names, there were still plenty of poker luminaries who made the money, with former WSOP bracelet winner Andy Bloch coming 105th for $1,623), Event #2 winner Louis Lynch finishing 50th for $2,758.42 and Joseph Cheong running all the way to 40th for $3,164.

New Zealand casino operator SkyCity Entertainment Group has been warned by the government that its Malta-licensed online casino was flouting local advertising laws.

On Monday, the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) issued a formal warning to SkyCity regarding its Malta-licensed SkyCityCasino.com site. The DIA found that an email SkyCity sent its loyalty program members in March had breached rules against promoting internationally licensed online gambling sites.

SkyCity’s Malta-based subsidiary launched its Gaming Innovation Group-powered online casino in August 2019, offering a mix of RNG and live dealer casino games. Customers were required to be physically located in New Zealand, despite the country having yet to authorize online casino gambling.

The offending email informed SkyCity customers that, while its land-based gaming operations had been halted by COVID-19, its online casino was “operating as usual.” A customer viewed this pitch as contravening Kiwi rules regarding the promotion of prohibited gambling products and filed a complaint with the DIA.