This week’s Europa League fixtures see the favourites for the competition – who each won their opening games – face teams of varying quality.

While some look to have easy ties, such as Arsenal’s game against Irish hopefuls Dundalk at The Emirates Stadium, other have trickier trips abroad, such as Premier League hopefuls Leicester city, who fly to Greece to play AEK Athens.

Let’s take a look at the sportsbetting value around some of the crucial ties that will take place on Thursday evening around Europe.

The Favourites in Action

Red Rock Resorts used the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown to get lean and mean, reporting impressive Q3 numbers for 2020. The casino operator saw a net income of $72 million, up from a loss in the same time last year.

Overall, net revenues were $353.2 million for Q3, understandably down from the $465.9 million for 2019. But thanks to cutting costs, it made the $72 million improvement in income, improving from a $26.8 million net loss in 2019. As a result, adjusted EBITDA (Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) was $160.9 million, an increase of 44.8%, or $49.8 million.

The costs cut to survive the pandemic look to be a strength for the operator going forward. “We believe there’s a permanent reduction in the cost of operating business,” said Frank Fertitta III, chairman and CEO. “The shutdown gave us the ability to question everything we were doing and to be very cautious reopening.”

CFO Stephen Cootey explained that the company cut $150 million in costs, and renegotiated agreements with third parties to save every penny they could. “These initiatives have resulted in a leaner, more efficient company and will enable us to achieve and sustain higher margins,” Cootey said.

DraftKings has announced that they will be renewing and extending a major partnership with MansionBet.

The new agreement inked with DraftKings means that the U.S. giant will continue to provide the power of their B2B technology for MansionBet’s online casino and sportsbook operations. The extension of the deal will also see DraftKings continue to provide services for MansionBet’s payments, compliance and anti-fraud functions.

DraftKings Chief International Officer Shay Berka continued to praise the long-term industry value of the partnership extension with MansionBet.

“Across multiple global jurisdictions, DraftKings is changing the way fans engage with sports.” Our renewal and extension with MansionBet, a tier-one operator in the highly competitive U.K. market, is another example of the strategic value DraftKings’ cutting-edge B2B technology provides to our clients.”

Kenya appears to be warming up to the idea of digital currencies, with the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) in discussions with other central banks to introduce a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and digital currency regulations. The change in attitude from the East African nation, driven by user demand, could be a positive sign for gambling companies.

CBK governor Dr. Patrick Njoroge revealed these intentions on the sidelines of the DC Fintech Week 2020, Njoroge struck a tone of optimism for digital currencies future with reporters.

Njoroge was also a presenter at the event, and talked about the CBK’s role in furthering CBDC initiatives. “We are already having discussions with other global players, in various ways, around the introduction of Central Bank Digital Currencies,” he said. “The push comes as a result of mushrooming of private cryptocurrencies and we [central bankers] are already feeling left out and need to create our own space.”

The reason for considering digital currencies starts first and foremost with stabilizing Kenya’s economy. “We will look at it [a CBDC] and see whether there is potential for enabling us to do our work better,” he stated.

This upcoming U.S. Presidential election is expected to be the biggest betting event ever, with many wagers expected to come in just as the ballot boxes close. The whole world will be watching to see the result, and many won’t stop wagering, as live wagering will keep things interesting right up until the last state is called.

With that in mind, I thought it might be handy to have a little viewing guide for our readers. We know what the odds are, we know the order states will start reporting, and we know what each candidate needs to win. So here’s what to expect as you watch the vote get counted on election night, and how to use it to your advantage for wagering.

The overall race: Biden is favored to win

The latest odds from Bodog have Former Vice President Joe Biden a -180 favorite (64.3%) to win the election. President Donald Trump is currently at +150 (40%). As experts have pointed out, that’s very different from what polling experts have suggested. Fivethirtyeight.com has Biden at 88%, with Trump at 12%.

Shareholders of Ainsworth Game Technology stock won’t be getting a Christmas bonus, or any other bonus, for a while. The Australia-based gaming equipment manufacturer has announced that won’t be paying out any dividends due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, adding that it doesn’t expect to be handing out any until its “markets become more predictable.” Ainsworth had suspended dividend payments this past August because of the ongoing coronavirus fallout and continued losses. 

Ainsworth chairman Danny Gladstone made the announcement as part of the company’s annual report (pdf), which was released yesterday. He explained, “Given the effects of the pandemic, the board has prudently decided to place the dividend policy on hold.” The suspension follows a 12-month loss of US$30.9 million, mostly because of COVID-19, following a successful prior-year period that had allowed it to record a profit of $7.74 million. 

In the filing, Ainsworth CEO Lawrence Levy added that the company’s operations had been significantly altered because of the pandemic, pointing out that the “entire workforce to work remotely, maintaining daily contact with management, establishing new game feature parameters and creating a pipeline of new, innovative and intuitive core products.” He added, “Looking to fiscal year 2021 and beyond, I consider that the company is in a strong position to recover. We had just launched our new A-Star cabinets in February 2020, prior to the global lockdown. We are now starting to roll out this hardware regionally, with Australia, North and Latin America already receiving positive feedback and strong performance numbers from our initial installations.”

The rollout comes via agreements Ainsworth has set up with Novomatic AG. The company announced last month that it had signed a sales and service agreement with the Austria-based casino equipment supplier for the Asia Pacific region that will allow it to “create new revenue streams” going forward. Novomatic purchased a 52% stake in Ainsworth two years ago, and the company’s Robert Dijkstra was appointed as Ainsworth’s VP of business development and sales for Asia Pacific last month as a result of the deal. 

Despite being neighbors, Hong Kong and Macau are being forced to approach the ongoing COVID-19 situation very differently in some respects. Hong Kong has been able to reduce the number of positive coronavirus cases recently, which is facilitating its ability to introduce more lenient travel policies with some other areas. However, Macau is finding itself in a tougher situation, and is cracking down on tourism with new quarantine measures. 

Hong Kong is emerging from a third outbreak of COVID-19 cases from this past July that has allowed it to record no new locally-born cases in the past several days. As a result, it has begun to relax some of the policies related to consumer activity and is ready to test a travel bubble with Singapore. The idea of allowing almost free travel between the two had already been discussed, but was never implemented due to the continued coronavirus threat. Now, according to Hong Kong CEO Carrie Lam, “Implementing the air travel bubble between Hong Kong and Singapore within the next month is one of our current targets.”

The city also expects to eliminate the quarantine requirements for Hong Kong residents who are returning from mainland China. There is currently a two-week quarantine on visitors coming from the mainland, as well as from Macau, but Hong Kong residents could be given a pass starting sometime next month. There will be limitations in place at first, however, as only the Shenzhen Bay Port and the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge borders are currently open. 

China has recently seen a new outbreak of coronavirus cases, with over 100 new positive tests recorded in the mainland city of Kashgar. This has forced Macau to issue a quarantine order for anyone arriving to the city who has visited Kashgar, with a two-week quarantine now being required. The mainland city, located in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, has reportedly identified 164 asymptomatic cases since last Saturday after having conducted over four million tests.

Australia wants casinos to know whether or not all the money that comes through their doors is illicit, even for the bloke who walks in off the street to plop down some cash in a slot machine. Short of identifying every dollar as it passes through the casino’s door, the idea seems to be a little far-fetched, but lawmakers are going to try anyway. A bill put forward by a member of parliament (MP) with a history of opposing gambling, Andrew Wilkie, would give Australian courts the ability to force casinos to return money to victims if it’s determined that the money had been taken from the victim as a result of theft. 

The Making Gambling Business Accountable bill would make changes to the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act and would define the stolen money the same way the Act defines stolen property. It was produced because problem gamblers often become thieves in order to feed their habits, according to Wilkie. He told The Sydney Morning Herald that, as a result, casinos should be held accountable if gambled money is found to have been previously stolen, adding that it’s no different than how a pawn store is required to return property if it’s determined to have been stolen. Wilkie asserts, “We must have a legal mechanism in place that ensures stolen money is returned to victims by gambling companies if the gambling companies are ordered to do so by a court of law. Gambling companies cannot be allowed to profit from the proceeds of crime.”

The bill would also force casinos to report their patrons to the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), the country’s financial crimes regulatory body. Centre Alliance MP Rebekha Sharkie is expected to support the bill and Wilkie believes he’ll be able to get more lawmakers on his side. However, he reportedly has not yet discussed it with the Coalition of Labor.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to try to prevent gambling addiction. However, if lawmakers believe that casinos should be accountable for receiving stolen money the same way pawn shops are, then the only logical conclusion is that the law be applied everywhere, not just on the gaming industry. Thieves aren’t just stealing cash in order to visit their local gambling house. 

The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (PAGCOR), the gaming regulator and operator of some casinos in the Philippines, has suffered in 2020 because of COVID-19. Like everywhere else, the economy in the Philippines has taken a hit because of the global pandemic, and PAGCOR has only been able to watch as its revenue slid for the better part of the year. The good news is that it’s back on the positive side; the bad news is that it hasn’t been able to recover completely. 

According to financial data published by PAGCOR, its net income from gaming operations for the first three quarters of 2020 came in at $461.7 million, off 60% from what it reported for the same period last year. For all of its operations, the entity saw net income of just $2.74 million after having recorded $102.72 million in 2019. PAGCOR was forced to take a hit as virtually all of the casinos in the Philippines were forced to close for the second quarter of the year. 

In line with the revenue drops, regulatory fees paid to PAGCOR also fell 60%, reaching just $174.54 million. However, offshore gaming operators delivered just 6% less income to the entity, contributing $77.75 million to PAGCOR’s bottom line. That helped lessen the sting – albeit only slightly – of the $242.36 million it had to pay in gaming taxes and revenue. $218.38 million had to be given to the Philippines Bureau of the Treasury as part of its legal obligation to surrender 50% of its annual gross earnings to the government. 

On the bright side, the results for the three quarters showed improvement over what PAGCOR had seen in the first half of the year. It previously reported a loss of $32.5 million for the period in the second quarter as revenue dropped to $48.4 million, which means that the third quarter was able to produce a profit of around $35.3 million. 

The 2020 U.S. election is looking to be one of the biggest moments in gambling we’ve ever seen, and there’s just a handful of people suited to give expert advice on how to interpret it for wagering. Thankfully, one of those people is Matthew Shaddick, Head of Political Betting at GVC, and he joined our Becky Liggero Fontana to discuss what to expect.

Shaddick didn’t start in politics betting, but he’s got a perfect background for it. I did my academic background in politics; I did my undergraduate degree in political science,” he told Liggero Fontana. “I joined Ladbrokes initially because I was kind of horse rating, that was my main motivation at the time. And around then, sort of 12, 15 years ago, political betting was a sort of PR-led novelty exercise, and the guy who did it before left, and I said, I’ll give this a go, be a fun hobby in my spare time. Pretty quickly became sort of all-encompassing, my full-time job for best part of a decade now. We’ve been lucky, we’re living through kind of interesting times.”

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We’ve been hearing for a couple of weeks that this would be a huge election for betting; Shaddick explained why that is. “Well it’s great because it’s pretty simple, right? You don’t have to be a political expert to understand it’s a two-horse race, either Biden or Trump is going to win, not like let’s say complicated parliamentary systems like we have in Europe, especially the U.K., Germany and so on, where even saying who wins this election is not necessarily an easy question to answer.”

There are many poker books that give you the skinny on how to play the cards you are dealt and strategise upon which cards you should be playing. Many of these books are excellent, but they are often restricted to hands and can leave the average poker player wondering what to do when they actually stare their opponent in the eye.

Playing the cards in a profitable way can be learned, but what about playing the player not the cards, as Mike McDermott does so brilliantly in the film Rounders when he sits on the fringes of the ‘judge’s game’ and can’t resist telling each beak what they’re holding.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZQln6DsWgE]

If playing poker is more about the player than the cards, then why aren’t more books about your opponents themselves rather than simply putting them down to a range of cards they like playing at the start of hands? Well, because doing so is immensely difficult.