Entain announced recently that it was possibly interested in buying TAB, the racing and sports gambling unit operated by Australia’s Tabcorp. At the time, it was still crunching the numbers to determine how much it was willing to put up, and the results are in. However, even though it has put a $2.3-billion cash offer on the table, it might find Tabcorp unimpressed with the amount. 

Entain is responding to rumors that Tabcorp might consider dividing its house as TAB has not been performing to expectations. It was the first to submit a proposal and asserts that the figure is in line with the market valuation provided by analysts with the Australian Securities Exchange. However, history has shown that companies will rarely sell assets at market value unless they’re desperate for cash. Based on Tabcorp’s just-announced earnings report, it isn’t.

The company just released its latest financial report today and showed a group-wide decline of just 1.5% for the first half of fiscal year 2021. The bottom line was $2.22 billion for the period, with a 6.2% decrease in EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). Much of that centered on Tabcorp’s Gaming Services division, which saw a 51% drop in revenue to $57 million. However, other areas, such as Lotteries/Keno and Wagering/Media, increased. 

CEO and Managing Director David Attenborough acknowledged that it had received a number of proposals, but didn’t provide details on the players or the amounts. He only offered, “There has been considerable commentary in the market about our wagering and media business. We have confirmed we have received a number of proposals and unsolicited approaches in relation to a potential transaction involving this business. They are also highly conditional and subject to numerous requirements such as due diligence, financing and various regulatory and racing industry approvals. The board will take the appropriate time to carefully consider all of the relevant issues and strategic options that arise in respect to these matters.”

Genius Sports continues to take the sports gambling industry by storm. It is on a tireless mission to be the go-to sports data providers for anything and everything related to sports, and just picked up another big deal. Wynn Resorts, through its WynnBET sports gambling arm, drafted the company to provide its data services to the company in a new multi-year deal.

Going forward, Genius Sports will use its official data channels to give WynnBET access to hundreds of sports organizations, including NASCAR, EPL and plenty of international options. A statement by the company explains, “The new partnership will also involve Genius’ ultra-fast, reliable official data content for hundreds of international soccer, basketball, ice hockey, table tennis and volleyball federations and leagues, including the English Premier League, Italian Serie A, German Bundesliga, LigaMX, Euroleague Basketball, and Argentine soccer.”

WynnBET will be able to take full advantage of Genius Sports and its LiveData and LiveTrading platforms, offering in-game gambling action where the operator is currently licensed, including Colorado, Michigan and New Jersey. Wynn continues to work on securing new licenses and already has several options in the works. It is close to being able to offer sports gambling in Iowa and Ohio, where it has recently gained access, has received conditional licensing in Tennessee and has applications pending in Indiana and Virginia.

Adds Jack Davison, Genius Sports’ Chief Commercial Officer, “Along with its broad market-access and nationally-recognizable brand name, Genius is an ideal partner to enhance WynnBET’s expanding online sportsbook and in-game betting offering. With growing numbers of states introducing online betting regulation, in-game handle is quickly rising – and WynnBET recognizes the direct engagement and revenue benefits of official data in this landscape.”

Malta now has four casinos in its roughly 122-square-mile territory, including Casino Malta, the Dragonara Casino, Oracle Casino and Portomaso Casino. It might soon have a fifth gambling property, though, if a government plan currently in the works is accepted. A request for proposals (RFP) for a new casino is underway, but any suitors will have to be prepared to accept some restrictions.

Malta published in the government’s official newspaper, the Malta Gazette, an RFP yesterday regarding a “concession to open and operate a casino in Malta.” The country’s Privatization Unit (PU) is overseeing the process and all submissions must be made in public no later than noon on April 7.  From now until then, several milestones are already in place to facilitate the process, including a cutoff date of March 1 for any requests for clarification on the RFP. Responses to those requests will be delivered no later than March 17, which will give candidates only about two weeks to make their final submissions.

The PU explains on its website, “The Privatisation Unit, acting on behalf of the Ministry for the Economy and Industry​, is hereby inviting Prospective Proponents to submit Proposals for the opening and operation of a casino in Malta. Prospective Proponents are reminded that for the opening and operation of a casino in Malta, the Successful Proponent must, in addition to holding the Concession, also hold a valid Casino Licence issued by the Authority in terms of the Gaming Authorisations Regulations.”

All proposals must come from companies that are established and registered in the European Economic Area and the entity that wins the concession must be fully-owned by that company. The casino will need to be built in a tourist area that has been designated as such by the Malta Tourism Authority, but two specific areas are off-limits. No casino will be allowed in either Gozo or Comino. Both are small islands that are part of Malta’s larger archipelago of 21 islands.

Delaware North Vice President Luisa Woods has been in the U.S. gambling industry since the 1990s, and she’s devoted her career to figuring out the best approach to marketing. She sat down with Calvinayre.com‘s lead reporter Becky Liggero Fontana to offer her thoughts on how U.S. casinos can overcome the new challenges of the regulated market.

Woods believes that the omnichannel market and the cross-over between online and land-based casinos represents a huge opportunity for operators. Woods spoke at a Betting on Sports America panel about the challenges operators face in navigating state regulations. She told us it’s still all about ‘location’ for land-based operators:

“It’s a really big challenge that land-based operators are very used to thinking in terms of location. They’re used to thinking in terms of you know traffic patterns and obviously, Americans flow very freely between states. Our properties in West Virginia are a great example of this, particularly we have a property at Wheeling Island which is on the northern panhandle and a lot of people will work on one side of the border and live on the other or travel across the border for entertainment or other things.”

“Both Pennsylvania and Ohio have gaming facilities, however, people who live within the catchment area of that casino are very used to driving to our property. Suddenly, you’ve got a situation where when they’re sitting at home and watching television, they’re being introduced to the idea of there’s a mobile app that I could download and play on but it’s not necessarily associated with the gaming company that I typically frequent. This is something that every single operator is having to wrestle with; it becomes a challenge of which markets are you going to enter.”

Online casino sites need to stay on top of the hottest slot offerings to keep up with the competition. We’ve got the newest slots released in the past week, so you can check them out and decide if you want them on your site.

Don’t miss out on all of the latest announcements. Our Press Release section is updated constantly.

GAMING1 embarks on a mystical journey in Astro The Great Race

Epic title invites players to compete in a frenzied race

Asian online gambling operator 500.com is ramping up its transition to cryptocurrency miner through the purchase of Jihan Wu’s crypto mining pool BTC.com.  

On Tuesday, the Shenzhen-based, Nasdaq-listed 500.com announced that it had reached a share exchange agreement with Blockchain Alliance Technologies Holding Company that will see 500.com assume control of the entire mining pool business of Bitdeer Technologies Holding Company, which operates as BTC.com. The deal also involves the transfer of the BTC.com domain and crypto wallet. 

The deal will see 500.com issue more than 44m Class A ordinary shares representing around 10% of its outstanding shares to Blockchain Alliance in exchange for all shares in Blockchain Alliance Technologies Ltd held by Blockchain Alliance. There’s also a potential top-up payment of 5% of 500.com’s outstanding shares should BTC.com report a net operating profit of at least US$20m in 2021. 

BTC.com ranks as the fourth largest mining pool with an estimated 10% of the BTC (Core coin) hash power. BitDeer’s beneficial owner is none other than Jihan Wu, co-founder of mining hardware outfit Bitmain, who left the firm in late-January following a prolonged and occasionally nasty feud with co-founder Micree Zhan. 

Day 2 of the MILLIONS Online Main Event saw 169 players reduced to just 25 and as the dust settled, Austrian player Daniel Smiljkovic had bagged up the chip lead with 133.6 million, the equivalent of 167 big blinds with which to attack Day 3.

With two days left in the monstrous opening tournament of the 28 that make up the partypoker MILLIONS Online series, Daniel Smiljkovic is closely followed in the chipcounts, followed as he is by Laszlo Molnar from Hungary (127.8 million) and Russia’s Leonid Orman     (69.5 million), although the former is quite clearly closer than the latter.

A little further back in the field, there are two big British names gathering like highly-skilled vultures, though only one of them is actually a lawyer. Will Kassouf fulfils that professional capacity, and the former WSOP “nine-high like a boss” player has 24.6 million with which to battle towards a final table seat.

Having won a $109 satellite to qualify for the tournament in the first place, Kassouf was understandably delighted at the profit he’s already returned on his investment and his chances with the 33 big blinds he’ll carry into play. 

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

The PGA Tour’s west coast swing to start the new year concludes this weekend with the Genesis Invitational at historic Riviera Country Club outside Los Angeles. Just about any movie star who likes to golf has played Riviera – also known as “Hogan’s Alley” as the legendary Ben Hogan won the Los Angeles Open at the track three times as well as the 1948 U.S. Open there.

The Genesis Invitational is hosted by and benefits the Tiger Woods Foundation, and while Woods will be on the grounds some this weekend, he’s still not healthy enough to play off another back surgery. We might not see Tiger compete until the Masters. This is a very rare event he has yet to win; Jack Nicklaus never won it, either. The tournament was renamed the Genesis Invitational last year, and an invitational means the fields are a bit smaller (120 players) and the purses a bit bigger. It’s still 72-hole stroke play with a 36-hole cut.

While the field at last week’s Pebble Beach Pro-Am left much to be desired, especially after world No. 1 Dustin Johnson withdrew, it’s a very strong field at Riviera that includes Johnson. He played over in Saudi Arabia on the European Tour two weeks ago and won. Technically, that was a second straight win on that Tour when including last November’s rescheduled Masters.

New Hampshire gamblers may hold the key to making smarter sports wagers. Either that, or they just got really lucky. A recent press release by the New Hampshire Lottery shows that sports gamblers won more than they lost on Super Bowl LV bets, which could only mean that they wagered mostly on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to beat the Kansas City Chiefs. Given the fact that the Chiefs were 3-point favorites going into the game, New Hampshire gamblers must really like the underdog. 

The Lottery indicates that gamblers in the state put up around $7.1 million on the Super Bowl, but they collected over $8.8 million. It adds that 81% of the wagers were on the Bucs, with a lot more attention being given on this Super Bowl than on last year’s. In 2020, when the Chiefs collected their first Super Bowl win in 50 years, New Hampshire gamblers wagered about $2.31 million, $5 million less than they did this year. Given that DraftKings holds a monopoly on sports gambling in the state, the book didn’t come out as well as it had hoped from the Super Bowl.

Charlie McIntyre, the executive director of the Lottery, adds, “Sports fans across New England know you cannot bet against Tom Brady, even if it is a little bittersweet watching him lead a different team to a Super Bowl championship. We want to congratulate our players for remaining loyal to the GOAT and for winning big in this year’s Super Bowl. With players betting more than $7.1 million, the volume of wagering on the Super Bowl speaks for itself. We are pleased to see the continued enthusiastic response to sports betting here in New Hampshire and we are excited to continue building momentum with this still relatively new product.”

Prop bets proved very enticing this year, as well. In New Hampshire, a lot of wagers were placed on props like whether Tom Brady would win the Super Bowl MVP title or if tight end Rob Gronkowski would score a touchdown, and both paid off for gamblers. Brady took the title, the fifth of his career, and Gronkowski not only scored a TD, but he scored the first in the game as the Bucs pummeled the Chiefs 31-9. 

Kangwon Land is making another run at a post-COVID-19 recovery. The only casino in South Korea that can allow locals to gamble was repeatedly forced to shut down last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, the latest occurring at the beginning of December. As it appears that COVID-19 is waning, or at least ebbing once again, South Korea is hoping it can try to put some type of normalcy back in place and Kangwon Land is going to see what happens, as well. The casino reopened yesterday, but not without serious precautions meant to avoid yet another shutdown.

Kangwon Land began operating yesterday at 10 AM. For now, only as many as 1,200 locals will be able to hit the gambling floor, but the property will remain-ultra vigilant to avoid any recurrences of the coronavirus. The casino shares ground with a ski and golf resort in the Gangwon Province and, as South Korea relaxes its COVID-19 restrictions, greater amounts of local foot traffic could bring greater risks of another outbreak.

According to South Korean health officials, the number of daily coronavirus infections has dropped substantially over the past five days. Where there were, on average, 1,000 new daily infections, there are now just 375, a sign that, perhaps, the country is winning the war against the seemingly indomitable virus. As a result, the South Korean national health alert level has been dropped to 1.5 to 2 around the country, except for the Seoul metropolitan area. It has seen more coronavirus cases and was operating under level 2.5, which has now been dropped to 2.

Kangwon Land took a major hit last year because of the pandemic and is anxious to get things running again. It was shut down three times before 2020 closed out and reported consistent losses throughout the year. In November, when it released its third-quarter performance, it reported a loss of $36.6 million that followed a loss of about $38.4 million in the previous quarter. In its latest update, Kangwon Land acknowledged that it took it on the chin last year, suffering a 2020 loss of about $250.2 million. The hit came as the casino saw its annual revenue fall 68.5% from what it recorded a year earlier.

No one in the industry can underestimate the old fashioned values of building trust amongst customers. Richard Downey, Senior VP for Connections by the Specialist Works, understands that more than most. He sat down with Calvinayre.com’s Becky Liggero Fontana to share his insights on the U.S. sports betting market.

Downey emphasized leveraging relationships from prior careers. “I was publisher of a magazine called Poker Player and I moved from there into the agency. I’ve been able to maintain an involvement in the gaming industry by having clients in the space,” Downey said.

Downey is a firm believer that operators still require a that branding plays an integral part in building trust with customers in the highly competitive U.S. sports betting market. 

“In the gaming sector there is an element of credibility and trustworthiness that exists everywhere, but especially in the U.S. market. Getting access to online gaming in the U.S. market for the past period of time has not been completely legitimated. Gaming is being rebranded as mainstream entertainment and it’s really important that the brands that come through with it do a good job for the customers.”

With millions of Americans out of work, the first sign of a recovery has to be in new jobs coming on the market. The tribal gaming industry is doing its part, with several operators posting new jobs in the past few weeks.

Seneca Gaming Corporation has lots of jobs available at the Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino in Niagara Falls and Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino in downtown Buffalo. The operator will be hosting a job fair for open positions on February 25 between 10:00am and 6:00pm.

“Even with the changes and challenges everyone has gone through over the past year, Seneca Gaming Corporation has remained one of the largest employers in Western New York, and we are excited to be growing our team across a variety of departments,” said Meghan Smith, Seneca Gaming Corporation’s vice president of human resources. “We truly believe that the time we spend at work should be rewarding, fulfilling and fun. That’s how we approach our jobs every day. If people are looking an opportunity in that type of environment, we are ready to talk to them.”

Attendees can check out what’s on offer in person or virtually, but should be ready for an interview at a moment’s notice.

The entire concept of a “bull market in stocks” makes little sense. Sound crazy? These days, certainly, because we’re always hearing about a perpetual bull market in stocks. Valuations increasingly disconnected from economic reality, asset bubbles in one class or another, armies of speculators moving like zombie hoards descending on the next fad and blowing it up to infinity and beyond, Buzz Lightyear-like.

Why is the whole concept of a bull market generally, nonsense? Because if the value of everything is going up simultaneously, then nothing is going up. If everyone is a superhero, nobody is. If, in an imaginary economy, absolutely everything costs, say, $5, (labor, land, capital whatever) and then the next day everything costs $10, then what’s changed? The answer is absolutely nothing.

The only thing that matters is relative valuations between asset classes. Let’s divide them into three of the most basic ones. Equities (stocks), bonds (debt), and commodities (consumer goods). If all three are going up in tandem, then there is no “bull market” in anything. If commodities are going up faster than stocks and bonds, you have inflation, or even hyperinflation. Ask anyone in Venezuela whether they care that their stock market is doing great, nominally. They don’t. They’re looking for their next glop of gruel or morsel of moldy bread to survive the day.

But if stocks and bonds are rising and consumer goods are static to falling, you have a bull market in financial assets. This is where we are now. And boy are we really hard and deep into it now. Below is the ratio of the S&P 500 to the CRB Commodities Index.

After New York Governor Andrew Cuomo finally admitted in December that expediting sports gambling activity in the Empire State would be a good thing, those who have been supporting the idea for the past couple of years found renewed hope in achieving their goal. Senator Joseph Addabbo and Assemblyman Gary Pretlow have been trying to get the state to speed up its rollout of sports gambling, but Cuomo repeatedly made it difficult. Now, facing a massive budget pothole, Cuomo has opened his eyes to reality and Pretlow is optimistic that the governor’s change of heart is going to help New York see sports gambling appear before the end of the year. 

Cuomo, who has repeatedly come under fire for decisions that didn’t seem to be in the best interest of New Yorkers, was adamant that introducing more sportsbooks would be counterproductive and that online sports gambling, in particular, would require an amendment to the state’s constitution. However, he has completely changed his tune lately as he stares down at a multibillion-dollar budget shortage. Sports gambling and marijuana are seen as a way to offset those losses, and Addabbo is thankful. He recently told Casino.org, “I remain optimistic that should it be in the budget April 1st, with a little initiative, our state government can get it up and running by Sept. 9th, which is the first day of the NFL football season.”

New York has missed the boat when it comes to the potential revenue sports gambling could bring. The state has four sportsbooks, all upstate, that combined for $3.6 million in revenue this past January. Indiana, in the same month, saw $29.3 million in sports gambling revenue, and the state is only about one-third the size of New York in terms of population. At any time since legislation was approved in New York to allow sports gambling, the state could have expanded the number of approved operators, which would have gone a long way to combatting the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Fortunately, New York hasn’t reached the point yet of being completely unstable. Addabbo believes, with the right mechanics, the state can get back on track, but adds, “We’re that car in the right lane with four wobbly wheels, and we’re limping along. And these other fast cars like (New) Jersey and Pennsylvania are whizzing by us. That’s an odd spot for New York to be in.”

Kansas has taken some tentative steps towards legalizing sports betting, and if a Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee meetings on February 10 and 11 are any hint, they’ll get there soon. Lawmakers kicked off the discussion with proponents of their effort, speaking with Jeff Morris, director of government affairs for Penn National Gaming, on the topic of Senate Bill 84, which would legalize mobile betting.

Morris praised what he sees in the bill. It’s got low tax rates (7.5% on gross gaming revenue for retail, 10% for digital)) and doesn’t have an official league data mandate, for which he prefers to allow the status quo to remain. “These deals can be reached privately and should not be legislatively mandated at what third parties declare to be ‘commercially reasonable’ terms,” he told the committee. “What may be ‘commercially reasonable’ to the leagues –- who face no competition –- may be inconsistent with the thin margin reality of sportsbook operators in a hyper competitive environment.”

Morris was the only sports betting representative to show up to the hearing, but others submitted testimony. Ryan Soultz of Boyd Gaming celebrated the mobile betting component of the bill. “Not only is mobile necessary to compete against the unregulated, off-shore sites but it is also an option that bettors demand,” he said.

Derek Hein, lobbyist for DraftKings and Fanuel, also added testimony that noted how important it was for Kansas to keep up with its neighbors, with Missouri and Nebraska considering legalization.