It’s been a tumultuous couple of years for Imperial Pacific International (IPI), but it hasn’t been anything the casino operator didn’t bring on itself. From a chairperson who is “clueless” about certain laws to a repeated inability to pay its debts, the company behind Saipan’s Casino Palace in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) has had to face one problem after another. However, at least there is some good coming out of all the drama, as CNMI lawmakers are moving to reshape the commonwealth’s gaming industry and make it more sustainable. 

One of the measures being discussed, according to the Saipan Tribune, involves separating the oversight of IPI to segregate its casino operations from its hotel operations. A bill, Senate Bill 22-09, was introduced by Senator Victor B. Hocog to allow the Commonwealth Casino Commission (CCC) to regulate IPI’s casino activity, while all non-gaming activities would be regulated by other entities. The CCC had initially been created because of IPI’s casino license, and shouldn’t be involved in other facets of the operation, according to Hocog. 

The bill was drafted on request of IPI and found support when it was discussed by the CNMI Senate. Most of the chamber’s members signed off as it went through its first, and final, reading, but not everyone was ready to approve the measure. Senators Paul A. Manglona and Edith E. DeLeon Guerrero voted against it, while Senator Teresita A. Santos abstained from voting. 

Part of the reason the two senators disapprove of the bill could be because they have plans of their own. Manglona and DeLeon Guerrero have filed Senate Bill 22-23, which would authorize a second casino license in the CNMI. Currently, IPI has an exclusive licensing agreement in the commonwealth, which has already proven to be a huge mistake, and, should the CCC decide to revoke that license, the new bill opens up the possibility of increasing the local gaming market. IPI’s license revocation, should it occur, would allow that license to be reissued and a second one issued, according to the legislation. 

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont is certain that opening the state’s gambling market will bring a lot of much-needed financial relief. The idea of being able to capitalize on the revenue offered by sports gambling and online gaming has him seeing huge dollar signs, but, unfortunately, his hands are tied. As has been the case in other states in the same situation, Connecticut has to first get past tribal compacts before increasing its gambling market, and this has repeatedly proven to be a very difficult task. However, in an update provided by Lamont Wednesday, progress seems to be taking place. 

Lamont explained during a budget address two days ago that he and his administration are busy working with the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes in order to try to bring more gambling options to the state. He indicated that progress is being made, but didn’t explain how far along the negotiations are. If he could, Lamont would already have online sportsbooks and casinos up and running, but convincing the tribes to agree to the changes is problematic. 

Lamont asserted during his address, “Our neighboring states are moving forward with sports betting and [iGaming], and Connecticut should not leave these opportunities for other states to benefit from our inaction. My administration has been in active negotiations with our tribal partners to bring the state’s gaming economy into the digital age. And I am submitting legislation which reflects what I believe to be the best bet in ending this stalemate of inaction in a way which is in the best interest [of] the entire state.” 

Two years ago, Lamont tried to get the tribes to agree to put a new joint casino project in the city of Bridgeport, not in East Windsor where they were headed. To entice them, he offered to throw in sports gambling and iGaming, but the tribes rejected the idea, suggesting that they aren’t interested in either activity. However, as 2020 brought massive revenue shortages because of COVID-19, the two tribes have shown that they are now more amenable to the idea. Casinos operated by the tribes saw significant losses last year and have already backed off the new East Windsor property idea.

The Daily Mail, possibly believing they’ve uncovered the sports scandal, are reporting the scandalous deals data providers make. The British tabloid has revealed their big investigation into data provided by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) reaching gambling operators before the general public.

In a report from their SportsMail section, they declare:

“Under the terms of contracts with data companies agreed between the ATP and IMG, and the WTA and StatsPerform, websites owned or funded by bookmakers are permitted to publish live scores ahead of sport’s official channels in the hope fans will be drawn to them and then be tempted to gamble.”

They go on to note that this is a deliberate practice, and suggest that it’s done so as to push the public to use gambling sites to check scores, rather than other sources of data.

In order to succeed in business, entrepreneurs have to be able to think outside the box and introduce new solutions to existing problems. That’s the route one inspiring and would-be businessman took when he decided to turn the casino floor at the Encore Boston Harbor into a pop-up methamphetamine drug store last September. Either that, or he was just really high. 

32-year-old Matthew Gorman of New Hampshire decided that it didn’t make much sense for meth users to have to go out of their way to purchase their vice, so he brought the vice to them. According to reports, Gorman was caught red-handed last September at the Wynn Resorts-owned property and busted for possession of meth, as well as two semi-automatic pistols and three large-capacity magazines. As a result, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office slapped him with five counts of possession of a large-capacity firearm, two counts of possession of a loaded firearm and a single count of possession with intent to distribute meth, considered a Class B substance.

The charges were upheld by a grand jury in Massachusetts’ Middlesex County. Given the fact that casinos have a great amount of experience monitoring and surveilling those who visit their properties, it would have been difficult for Gorman to find a way to plead not guilty, even if he hadn’t been caught with all the evidence in his possession. Massachusetts casinos began to reopen in July following a shutdown caused by COVID-19 and, even if security was a little rusty, casinos have too much at risk not to remain vigilant. With reduced capacities in response to the pandemic, security personnel and the eyes in the sky have a much easier time keeping tabs on what is happening on casino floors.

Now that the grand jury has weighed in on Gorman’s entrepreneurial spirit, next comes the sentencing. It will be up to a judge to determine the best penalty for his crimes, but it’s doubtful his spirit is going to be rewarded kindly. According to Massachusetts law, intentionally distributing meth is worth ten years in prison and a fine of as much as $10,000. Add to that possession of a large-capacity firearm, and the sentence jumps to at least 15 – five years for each possession charge. If Gorman is sentenced for all five firearm possession charges, he could be looking at 35 years behind bars. 

The Drew, that unfinished Las Vegas resort with more than it’s fair share of problems, has a familiar name coming to save it. Koch Industries and Jeffrey Soffer have acquired the property, looking to put it back on track after more than a decade of problems.

Soffer, CEO of Fountainbleau Development, was part of the group that started building the casino in the mid-2000s, then called the FountainBleu. It’s most recent developer, Steve Witkoff, renamed it The Drew in honor of his deceased son. The property has yet to open more than a decade since ground was first broken, and Witkoff leaves the property with stories of him failing to pay their contractors.

So Soffer is back. “Talk about a saga from conception to completion for this property,” Las Vegas real estate broker Michael Parks told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He expects Soffer will “meet his original vision” for the resort, and “finally get this open and complete it.”

Parks also speculated that Koch Industries sees there’s money to be made in Vegas. With the city still struggling to regain its footing from the Covid-19 pandemic, investors are finding bargains that could lead to future fortunes.

As long as there aren’t any last-minute surprises, the highly-anticipated Virgin Hotels Las Vegas is finally going to open soon. The new property, which occupies the former Hard Rock Las Vegas location, has had to delay its grand opening twice because of COVID-19, but, if the old saying holds up, the third time’s the charm. 

Initially, the idea was to have the new casino up and running last November, but that fell apart because of the coronavirus pandemic. The launch was then pushed back to this past January 15, which also failed as a result of COVID-19. A new statement issued by JC Hospitality President and CEO Richard Bosworth asserts that the Virgin Vegas property will finally open its doors on March 25, provided there aren’t any more bumps in the road. JC Hospitality is the owner of the property branded by Richard Branson’s Virgin name, and Bosworth added, “It has been a journey, but to finally reach this milestone and confidently announce our opening date would not be possible without our incredible partners and construction team.”

Bosworth is anxious to get the casino going, as he is heavily invested in its future success. He teamed up with Jupiter Capital Partners and Branson to purchase the Hard Rock Las Vegas in 2018, leading to the latter’s iconic massive guitar being replaced by the Virgin “V.” $500 million was spent on the purchase, not including the renovations. By the time all the work is done, there will be three hotel towers offering a total of 1,504 rooms and 323 executive suites, a 60,000-square-foot casino, a 4,500-seat theater and a 650-seat showroom. As had been previously announced, Virgin is going to bring back some of the former Hard Rock workers, already knowledgeable and experienced in the layout of the property. 

Bosworth added in the statement, “We are not only celebrating the fact that we finally get to welcome back guests to the most exciting resort to open in Las Vegas in years, but we also get to bring our team members back to work.” Now, ready to put 2020 in the rear-view mirror and get Vegas back to work, Virgin Vegas, as well as all of the city’s casinos are anxious to put everything back in order. Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak is helping in that regard, announcing a new increase in the capacity allowed on gaming floors. As of this coming Monday, casinos will be able to operate at 35% of their normal capacity, and the figure will increase to 50% on March 15. He added, “We’re going to get through this together. I want to return to the Nevada we know and we love.”

No one could have anticipated the sudden appearance of a virus that would bring the global gambling industry to a sudden stop, but that’s what COVID-19 did. As a result, a number of projects that were in various stages of development had to change their plans. One of these was Inspire Korea, the dream project launched by Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment (MGE) in South Korea. Without the necessary funding in place to continue with the new property’s construction, its future was called into doubt and MGE delayed its still-undetermined launch date. However, the casino operator is optimistic that this is nothing more than an insignificant, temporary setback and expects to be able to secure the rest of the money it needs to move the project forward sometime early this year.

MGE had to become a little concerned after it was revealed that South Korean gaming regulators were threatening to pull the rug out from under Caesars for its own problems with developing a casino resort in the country. That likely served to give MGE additional incentive to find a resolution and the company said in an investors call this week that it is still working on securing financing from several “blue chip” institutions in the country. It didn’t, however, indicate exactly when the financing might be in place.

The company’s VP of Corporate Finance, Chris Jones, added, “We are getting into a lot of long-form documentation at this point. Korea is in a very heightened sense of COVID restrictions. Even though they have a lower number of cases in that market they are very wary about it, so as a result we’ve seen things slow down. But we are optimistic that we will be able to close on the financing over the next couple of months and get construction ramped up again.”

Inspire was supposed to be ready sometime next year, but that was before the coronavirus appeared and screwed up everyone’s plans. MGE was forced to alter the timeline for the resort’s development, pushing back the projected launch date to 2023. It also restructured the phased construction plan, reallocating $200 million that would have been used in Phase 2 and moving it to Phase 1 in order to make up for lost ground caused by the global pandemic.

The Americas

Scientific Games CEO and President Barry Cottle has been rewarded with a new contract. Cottle is set to stay on until May 2024 after his current contract was set to expire later this year; NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin is the bookies favourite to take out the 2021 edition of the Daytona 500. Hamlin won the big race twice and is hoping to become the first driver to score a three-peat at the iconic event; Wynn Resorts is hoping to raise $5.5 million in a public stock sale. The operator has offered up to 6.32 million shares to potential investors; Former president Donald Trump continues to take a beating in his impeachment trial. Bookmakers think that Trump will be safe again from impeachment with Republicans unlikely to join forces with the Democrats; Caesars Entertainment is planning on ditching the iconic Planet Hollywood Casino on the Vegas Strip. Rumors continue that impending employee layoffs mean a sale is imminent later this year; Texas sports teams have joined forces to protest the state’s anti-gambling agenda. The Mavericks, Texas Rangers and Dallas Cowboys are tipped to back the efforts of legislators to introduce online gambling to the state; Wynn Resorts continued its effort to get its piece of the U.S. sports betting market. The state of Tennessee has given conditional approval for the operator to allow sports gambling through WynnBET.

Europe 

The new Commission for Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries (CRGL) in Ukraine continues to fine tune regulations. The new regulator has rejected 15 license applications leaving operators in a state of confusion; English Premier League club Southampton FC has tapped into its existing relationship with a crypto sportsbook to expand its operations. Southampton has signed on with Sportsbet.io, which is owned by the Coingaming Group; 5Dimes has been awarded an Isle of Man gaming license. Regulators signed off on the application this month paving the way for the operator to launch sports betting and casino products in local markets;

Ed Pownall rakes over the Superbowl result, China putting the blockers on, sports data wars & curbs on us punters in the UK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=conizTBjWPsVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: The Industry Eye – Season 8 Episode 10 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=conizTBjWPs)

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The best football league in the world returns to action this Saturday and Sunday as some truly huge clashes will thrill football fans around the globe.

Two of the biggest games of the remaining EPL Season take place over the weekend as Leicester City host Liverpool and Manchester City welcome Tottenham Hotspur to the Etihad Stadium.

Before we tell you the full fixture list for this weekend’s Premier League fixtures, let’s look at those two games in more details and provide you with some betting odds for a couple of value bets.

Leicester City vs. Liverpool (Saturday, 12.30pm GMT kick-off)

Australian casino operator Crown Resorts is reportedly losing its CEO as the fallout from the damaging report into its regulatory shortcomings continues to spread. 

On Thursday, Australian media reported that Crown CEO Ken Barton had agreed to resign ‘in the coming days’ following a meeting with chair Helen Coonan. Barton has been under pressure to walk the plank since Tuesday’s release of a devastating regulatory report that found Crown unsuitable to hold a gaming license at its Crown Sydney venue in New South Wales. 

Barton’s disastrous appearance last September before the NSW Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority (ILGA) inquiry left him with few options. Amongst other failings, the ILGA report found that Barton paid little attention to internal reports of suspect transactions in financial accounts set up to help VIP gamblers funnel money to Crown casinos.

ILGA commissioner Patricia Bergin concluded that Barton’s actions “demonstrated a serious lack of judgment” and his issues “will not be cured by the appointment of people expert in the field who report to him.” The report also concluded that Barton was too obsequious in his dealings with James Packer, Crown’s single largest shareholder (the report recommended Packer’s current 36% stake be reduced and capped at just 10%). 

If you’re a modern poker fan, we could excuse you for knowing nothing of the man called Larry Flynt, but for those of a certain age, Flynt comes to symbolize an era of poker that is etched in the very fabric of the game.  

With the late Larry Flynt’s controversial life often drawing headlines, we ask today whether his passing will have a positive effect on the game of poker.  

Often, referencing the inglorious beginnings of an industry can bring up unsavoury characters. Trading gold is the reserve of the mega-rich and upper classes today, but that wasn’t the case in the middle of the Gold Rush as nefarious characters panned, shot and hustled for the very future of their families.  

If anyone was a hustler, it was Larry Flynt, so it was perhaps fitting that his adult magazine was called The Hustler, a publication that at first courted controversy then caught like wildfire, selling millions of copies as America woke up to progressive freedoms that today seem quaint or ludicrous when viewed through a retrospective lens.  

Despite a massive increase in sports gambling activity, fueled primarily by the addition of legal states in the U.S., there hasn’t been an increase in sports integrity issues. This is the succinct takeaway from a recent report by the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), which indicates the figures have remained relatively unchanged over the past several years. Last year saw a bump in the number of complaints, but nothing that would indicate match-fixing in sports is running rampant.

The IBIA indicates that there were 270 suspicious gambling reports lodged last year. They came from 43 countries and 15 sports, with 68 of the complaints found in the first quarter. This is a significant jump -48% – from the 183 that were reported a year earlier; however, taking into account the total number of sports contests that were played around the world, the figure is still extremely low. 

Soccer activity saw the biggest increase in complaints last year, increasing by 25% to 61. Tennis, which has a history of match-fixing, saw even more, with 98. Of those related to tennis, 39 were addressed by the International Tennis Integrity Agency since they didn’t involve any major competitions. Of all of the investigations launched by the IBIA, only 12 players or teams received criminal or sports sanctions due to suspicious gambling activity. 

The CEO of the IBIA, Khalid Ali, explains that COVID-19 may have played a role in the uptick, asserting, “2020 was a turbulent year for many sectors including the betting industry, which had to adjust its market offering due to the global sports lockdown. As a result, IBIA focused its integrity monitoring activity to take account of new sports tournaments and competitions that emerged.”

5Dimes, the former Costa Rica-based sportsbook, is now headquartered in the Isle of Man. Following the kidnapping and murder of the company’s founder, William “Tony” Creighton, in 2019, 5Dimes wasn’t ready to give up and began looking for ways to enter the nascent U.S. market. It made a deal with U.S. authorities to help it in its quest, and just received a license in the Isle of Man. That approval gives it a foundation upon which it can build out its global footprint and marks a huge step forward to possibly entering the U.S. market.

The Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission signed off on 5Dimes’ license application this month, paving the way for the sportsbook to offer online sports gambling and casino products to the local market. It doesn’t give it direct access to the U.S. market, but allows it to begin to establish itself as a global player that might eventually be able to appeal to regulators in the U.S. once it demonstrates that it conforms to their standards. As a member of the World Trade Organization and part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development White List, the Isle of Man is a great launching point for 5Dimes.

Laura Varela, Creighton’s widow and member of the 5Dimes Board of Directors, said about the new Isle of Man license, “This licensure is an exciting milestone for the 5Dimes brand. The Isle of Man is a Tier-1 jurisdiction, known for its advanced approach to gambling and e-gaming legislation and its exceptional reputation in the international gaming community. The Isle of Man sets high standards for its gaming operators and players, and we look forward to upholding the same level of principles and innovation with the launch of 5Dimes.”

5Dimes is now going to set up shop in the Isle of Man, planting a management and operations team there to oversee the company’s launch. Its establishment as a legitimate operator among other global sportsbooks was made possible because of the deal it worked out with U.S. authorities, which included a payment of $46.8 million to the Department of Justice. That money came from both the company’s proceeds, as well as Varela.

While 2020 was undeniably a bad year, MGM Resorts managed to just barely beat expectations with their Q4 financial report. Huge declines were bolstered by a few bright points of optimism for the future.

Overall, MGM reported a 53% decline in revenue for the quarter, still seeing the effects of Covid-19 at all of their brick-and-mortar locations. Revenue was down to $1.5 billion, dropping from $3.2 billion for the prior year’s last quarter.

Overall, that resulted in an operating loss of $364 million, down from the income of $3 billion in 2019.

The company noted optimistically at the top of their report that it’s recovery will be led by local casinos, rather than vacation destinations like Las Vegas or Macau. But Bill Hornbuckle, Chief Executive Officer and President, talked up BetMGM as the real excitement driving the company to recovery. “BetMGM gained significant market share throughout 2020 while successfully launching in seven new states. We expect to be in 20 markets by the end of the year, and are very pleased with the January launches in Iowa, Michigan, and Virginia.”