Ed Pownall dines out on William Hill takeover talk, the stupidity of Scientific Games, lots of good news & wanky headline of the week.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QToj1_KXgLw]
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Half of Virginia’s sports betting applicants are going to go home disappointed while Massachusetts casinos want to ensure online-only operators find no favor in their state.
On Thursday, the Virginia Lottery announced that it was reviewing 25 applications for the minimum four/maximum 12 mobile sports betting permits available under the state’s wagering legislation. The identities of these applicants weren’t disclosed, but the lucky recipients will be selected by January 31, 2021.
That dirty dozen licensees doesn’t include applications “tied to certain major league sports franchises” that call Virginia home. (Since the state has no such entities at present, do its two NASCAR racetracks count?) It does include applications by the four casinos authorized this spring by voters in the cities of Bristol, Danville, Norfolk and Portsmouth.
As the Lottery previously explained, preference will be given to operators with US market experience (and success), along with applicants’ capacity to generate revenue and new jobs, and which at least attempt to attract investors “that are minority individuals.”
The Nations League returns this weekend with some terrific action that will take place between some of the best countries in European International football.
Hostilities are renewed between rivals from the 2018 World Cup, while other major nations face banana skins they could easily slip up against. Where should your money be at? Let’s take a look at the form.
Saturday 14th November
Portugal vs. France (7.45pm GMT kick-off)
Online voting is now open for the 11th annual winner of the Secretariat Vox Populi Horse of 2020. The Vox Populi award recognizes the racehorse whose popularity and racing excellence best resounded with the public.
As the Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale moved into Book 3 during the fourth session Nov. 12, there continued to be fervent demand for the better mares and foals on offer.
Some poker books are built for the age in which they were published. Others, such as Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book, are more universal, evergreen reads. There’s a place for both kinds of book in your poker library.
It goes without saying that if you know poker, then you’ll have heard of Phil Gordon. Having sat across the felt from some of the best in the business, Gordon is an authority on playing poker against big name players.
Not restricted to just tournaments or cash games, the Little Green Book has advice on both and while in other books this makes the content a little wooly, the fact that it’s a little green book and not a massive green book (rejected titles are easy to look back on and laugh about) keeps the tips and tricks concise enough to hit home.
There’s a strong sense of the editing involved, because the writing is really tight and that’s a great thing. There’s not a wasted page in the book, and it is very rare to be able to say that about any book around poker, purely because there are usually a couple of pages that miss any reader of the game.
The latest EPT Online High Roller title has been won by Mikita Badziakowski, but he was joined on almost exactly the same amount of money by Matthias Eibinger in a two-way deal heads-up that gave both men bragging rights.
The 2020 PokerStars European Poker Tour Online has only been running for four days, but the big names are already hoovering up the biggest prizes.
Two of those players were Mikita Badziakowski the Belarussian and Austrian high roller powerhouse and Pokercode co-creator Matthias Eibinger, who surfaced in the $10,300-entry event to win just over $220,000 each.
The final nine assembled on Wednesday night and it was a British player who was busted first, with Conor Beresford biting the dust to earn a payday of $33,035. He was followed out of the door by Canadian poker boss Timothy Adams, who banked $39,498 for his efforts.
The English Premier League season lasts 38 games, and by now, with eight games already completed by all 20 teams, one of the 20 managers who take charge of clubs such as Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal would have lost their job.
The Premier League Managerial Sack Race future odds are always hotly disputed at the start of the season, and rightly so – it’s an extremely lucrative market if you have any kind of insider knowledge.
There’s precious little of that about, when it comes to this oddest of EPL seasons, with clubs such as Leicester City and Tottenham Hotspur in the top two places and other, more hotly tipped sides such as the Manchester clubs and Arsenal languishing around the halfway part of the table.
No dice on Brendan Rodgers (66/1) or Jose Mourinho (55/1) getting the sack then. But who are the favourites?
After scratching from the American Pharoah Stakes (G1) at Santa Anita Park Sept. 26 due to a short episode of colic, Weston returns to action against Spielberg and four other 2-year-olds in the $100,000 Bob Hope Stakes (G3) Nov. 15 at Del Mar.
Testing of nearly 100 Thoroughbreds previously raced by trainers indicted in March on performance-enhancing drug charges indicated that 77% showed the presence of clenbuterol, according to Dr. Scott Palmer.
Spanish gambling operator Codere continues to bleed red ink in Latin America and its European retail operations are being hobbled just as they started showing signs of life.
Figures released Thursday show Codere generated revenue of €143m in the three months ending September 30, a 58.4% decline from the same period last year. The company reported negative earnings of €70.1m and a net loss of €62.1m, more than twice the €30.7m loss in Q3 2019.
As with Q2 2020, all of Codere’s regional land-based operations reported negative revenue growth in Q3, while the online unit was up nearly one-fifth year-on-year to €18.7m (two-thirds of which came via Spain). The Q3 online total was nearly €5m better than Q2, which suffered from the pandemic halt of major sports activity, although Q3’s online earnings were down 22.3% to €2.7m.
Total LatAm revenue was down 89.5% to €20.9m, as Argentina and Panama contributed precisely nothing during Q3, while Colombia slumped 94% to just €300k. Mexico, traditionally Codere’s second-biggest market after Argentina, fell 89% to €8.4m while Uruguay outshined the lot by slipping only one-third to €12.1m.
The Haras de Bonneval roster is led by Siyouni (FR), the sire of Arc hero Sottsass and who has earned a hefty increase to €140,000, up from €100,000 in 2020.
More European teenagers may be gambling even as fewer are drinking, smoking and doing drugs, and there appears to be a growing problem of 11-year-olds running wild in UK casinos.
The latest European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) queried nearly 100k students aged 15-16 years old in 35 countries — but not the UK — regarding their indulgence last year in a variety of vices, such as alcohol, drugs and other potentially addictive behaviors, including gambling.
Overall, the report found slow but steady declines in smoking, drinking (particularly binge drinking) and illicit drug use, but around 22% of students gambled in some form in 2019, up from 14% in 2015. That said, the authors note that changes in the phrasing of gambling-related questions make for difficult comparisons with the previous survey.
Lotteries remain the dominant form of teen gambling at 49% participation, followed by sports or race betting (45%), cards or dice (44%) and slot machines (21%). A much smaller number (7.9%) reported having gambled online last year.
Jockey John Velazquez will be replacing Manny Franco, who piloted the son of Constitution to four grade 1 wins. The connections are pointing the colt to the Jan. 23 Pegasus World Cup (G1) at Gulfstream Park.
Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com
UFC 255 is on November 21, but there’s a solid warm-up card this Saturday from the organization’s Apex facility in Las Vegas as a bout between lightweights Paul Felder and Rafael Dos Anjos highlights a Fight Night event. The main card begins at 7 p.m. and is available on ESPN+.
Being honest, this matchup is a huge downgrade from the originally scheduled fight between Islam Makhachev, who is the 12th-ranked lightweight in the UFC rankings, and Dos Anjos, who is No. 12 in the welterweight division.
Originally, those two were to fight at UFC 254 at Fight Island in Abu Dhabi, but Dos Anjos tested positive for COVID-19 and it was postponed. Dos Anjos left his home in California to train in his native Brazil for that fight, and that country is being ravaged by the virus. Makhachev on social media wrote that he wanted to stay on the card because his good buddy UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov was on it, but the UFC said no.
Horse Racing has always been known as the ‘Sport of Kings’. Once the great betting experience for the noble and the affluent, however, horse racing today exists as a sport anyone can access within a few seconds via their smartphone.
Despite this fact, many of the processes and experiences around horse racing has been overtaken by other sports. From in-play betting on elite soccer in Europe to spreadbetting and Fantasy Sports on the NFL, in some senses, horse racing has been passed on the inside straight.
That is, until now – and 1/ST Bet.
1/ST Bet is a fully integrated mobile application and website that help sportsbettors weigh up horse racing statistics with real-time data to make a more informed decision on their investments. But they’re so much more than that, too. They’re a link to horse racing’s glorious past but also act as a conduit to its future, modernizing and revolutionizing the sport for new bettors, whether those are at the racetrack or not.
Hot Rod Charlie, runner-up to Essential Quality in the TVG Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Presented by Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, is likely to be freshened over the remainder of 2020 to prepare for a 3-year-old campaign, trainer Doug O’Neill said.
Kameko, the fastest ever winner of the QIPCO Two Thousand Guineas (G1), has had his introductory fee set at £25,000 ahead of his debut season on stallion duty at Tweenhills Farm & Stud in Gloucestershire.
New sire and group 1 winner Without Parole will stand for £10,000.
UK online gamblers gave up playing poker in September while sports betting surged with the resumption of Premier League football.
Figures released Thursday by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) show ‘real event’ betting was the only major gaming vertical to report a revenue increase from August to September, with the return of top flight football pushing betting revenue up 15% to £189.6m. The number of active bettors rose 14% month-to-month while the total number of bets rose only 5%.
Online slots, the Loki of online gambling’s Marvel universe, saw more players make fewer bets, as active player ranks rose 6% from August to September while total slots bets and operator revenue both fell 4%. In fact, September’s slots revenue of £157m was the lowest monthly total since the UKGC began its pandemic market watch in April.
Non-slots casino revenue fell 5% despite the total number of bets rising 2%. The ranks of active casino gamblers fell 4%, meaning the absence of casino dilettantes left the more committed players to shoulder the load. Market-wide, the return of sports resulted in the share of gamblers who wagered on more than one activity falling to 32% in September from 41% in April.