Bangladesh’s Supreme Court is upholding the order that bans gambling activities, such as dice, card and housie, at 13 clubs across the country.

Early this week, the High Court directed the government to “immediately stop gambling” at the clubs, which include the Dhaka Club, Uttara Club Ltd, Gulshan Club Ltd, Dhanmondi Club Ltd, Banani Club Ltd, Officers’ Club Dhaka, Ladies’ Club Dhaka, Cadet College Club Dhaka, Chittagong Club Ltd, Chittagong Seniors’ Club Ltd, Narayanganj Club Ltd, Sylhet Club Ltd and Khulna Club Ltd.

The court ruling was in response to a writ petition filed by two Supreme Court lawyers Samiul Huq and Rokonuddin Md Faruq, The Daily Star report.

Barrister Redowan Ahmed Runjid, lawyer for the petitioners, told the news outlet that “gambling in exchange for money is illegal and a punishable offence under the Dhaka Metropolitan Police Ordinance 1976, Chittagong Metropolitan Police Ordinance, 1978 and Public Gambling Act, 1867 and Article 18(2) of the constitution.” Despite this, the clubs still arranged playing dice, cards and housie “involving exchange of money” in their premises, clearly violating the provisions, the barrister said.

Kazuo Okada’s new Philippine resort casino Okada Manila will open on December 21, becoming the third integrated resort to launch in Manila’s Entertainment City gaming zone.

On Thursday, Okada’s local partner, businessman Antonio Cojuangco, confirmed the December 21 date during an interview at the Pilipinas Conference in Manila. The oft-delayed property had promised a soft-opening last month but “worse-than-expected weather conditions” forced the launch to be pushed back a month.

Okada’s Universal Entertainment raised another $200m last month to ensure the timely completion of the $2.4b Okada Manila project. The Standard claimed that 18k workers were striving to make sure Okada doesn’t have to play the Grinch this Christmas by announcing another delay.

Okada Manila will join Bloomberry Resorts’ Solaire Resort & Casino and Melco Crown Entertainment’s City of Dreams Manila in Entertainment City. The fourth and final project, Travellers International’s West Side City Resorts World, won’t arrive until 2020 at the earliest.

UK-listed gambling operator Sportech got an early Christmas present after finally prevailing in its seven-year, £97m fight with the UK taxman.

On Thursday, Sportech announced that the UK Supreme Court has refused to hear the appeal of Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) over a value added tax (VAT) repayment relating to Sportech’s Spot the Ball game.

The case dates all the way back to 2009, when Sportech’s Littlewoods subsidiary realized it had paid £40m in VAT on its Spot the Ball game over a 17-year period before realizing that games of chance weren’t subject to VAT. HMRC rejected Sportech’s request for a refund plus interest, and the two sides quickly lawyered up.

In 2013, won its case at the First Tier Tribunal Chamber, which HMRC appealed. In 2014, the Upper Tribunal ruled in favor of HMRC, and Sportech was forced to return the £97m it had received only three months earlier.

UK high street bookmakers saw their shares dive on Thursday on word that parliamentarians were pushing for further restrictions on fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBT).

On Thursday, the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on FOBTs called on the government to reduce the maximum betting stake on FOBTs to £2 from its current £100. The government is currently conducting a review of FOBT activity, including whether to reduce the current cap of four FOBTs per betting shop.

Labor MP Carolyn Harris (pictured), who chairs the APPG, urged the government to “properly regulate FOBTs and to do so with immediate effect.” Harris claimed that the maximum stake reduction should “at the very least” be done “on a precautionary basis.”

The £2 max stake has long been a goal of anti-gambling campaigners, but the government rejected a stake reduction in 2015 after the industry agreed to require FOBT wagers over £50 to be placed with betting shop staff rather than via the machines.

The Australian division of UK bookmakers William Hill won’t have a courtside presence at this year’s Australian Open tennis event.

Hills made history at the 2016 Australian Open by becoming the first official betting partner of the nation’s biggest annual sporting event. The deal, believed to have been worth a cool AU$5m, marked the first time a bookie had partnered with a Grand Slam event and Hills said its betting turnover rose 80% year-on-year thanks to the extra exposure.

But the tie-up provoked no shortage of controversy, particularly in light of other bookies’ claims of suspicious betting patterns on an Australian Open match. Though investigators subsequently cleared the players involved in the suspect match, the publicity wasn’t the kind tennis organizers would have preferred.

On Thursday, Tennis Australia president Steve Healey confirmed that Hills’ courtside advertisements won’t be visible when the 2017 event gets underway next month. Healey said the 2016 deal with Hills was signed “before this [match-fixing] issue had such a high profile and so we’ve worked with our partners to address that.”

MGM National Harbor is set to roll the red carpet on Thursday after Maryland Lottery and Gaming Director Gordon Medenica finally signed its operational license.

“MGM National Harbor successfully demonstrated that it has met the state’s legal and regulatory requirements and is ready to open,”Medenica, who signed the operations license Wednesday, said, according to The Washington Post.

Before Medenica signed the last bit of important paperwork, Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency conducted tests and assessed the facility’s systems and controls, including more 3,321 slot machines and 165 table games, internal controls, employee training, technical systems and other operations.

About 7,500 people gambled with real money when they took part in the controlled demonstrations held on December 1 and 5. Neither the casino nor Maryland Lottery and Gaming immediately disclosed how much money was gambled.

Just when everybody thought that the gambling expansion plan is already dead in the water, New Jersey lawmakers made a stealthy move to forward a bill that calls for the introduction of alternative gaming areas in at least a few of the state’s horse racetracks.

The move of state legislators to advance Bill A4255 came a month after New Jersey residents overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have allowed casinos in North Jersey

Politico reported that the new proposal, which hurdled the Assembly gaming committee after a 4-3 vote, may allow the expansion of casinos to the race tracks without amending the state constitution or holding another election.

To be specific,  A4255 will allow Monmouth Park and the Meadowlands Racetrack could partner with existing Atlantic City casinos to create what supporters described as “internet cafes” offering online gambling.

Popular digital currency bitcoin has already surged 75 percent over the course of 2016—but that’s peanuts compared to 2017, when analysts expect the cryptocurrency to ramp up another 165 percent.

The reason? U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

More specifically, Trump’s “spending binge” may cause the digital currency to hit over $2,000 next year, according to a report released by Denmark-based Saxo Bank.

During the campaign season, Trump talked about a possible increase in fiscal spending, which could increase U.S.’s national debt—currently at roughly $20 trillion—and triple the current budget deficit from an estimated $600 billion to $1.2-1.8 trillion. This, in turn, could cause the inflation to “sky rocket” and eventually force the U.S. Federal Reserve to hike interest rates faster, resulting the already surging dollar to “hit the moon.”

Macau’s gross gaming revenue (GGR) will continue to track an upward trajectory in 2017 on the back of mass-market gamblers and the government’s tighter regulations on risky bettors, Macau’s casino regulator said.

Paulo Chan, director of the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ), painted a rosy picture for Macau as he credited the stricter regulations that the government implemented concerning junket operators, money laundering and phone betting this year.

But Chan was cautious in giving an estimate on Macau’s 2017 GGR, which he pegged at MOP200 billion ($25 billion). The estimate was the same amount that the casino regulator projected for 2016 and 13 percent below the estimates of five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Chan said he has taken into account the slowing Chinese economy, a depreciating yuan and the uncertainties of a new U.S. presidential administration in giving his GGR forecast.

Oakland Raiders quarterback Derek Carr’s struggles against the Kansas City Chiefs, at least according to oddsmakers, apparently override the Chiefs’ recent against-the-spread struggles at Arrowhead Stadium.

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

In a game that could decide the AFC West title, the Chiefs are listed as three-point favorites against the Raiders with a 46.5-point total in the Thursday Night Football matchup.

As soon as December hits, I am constantly contacted by iGaming industry professionals for advice on what conferences they should attend in the year ahead.  This time of year is a popular window for annual planning and budgeting, plus most organizers have already unveiled their “save the dates” and locations for events taking place over the next twelve months.  It is for these reasons I decided to dedicate this week’s column to 2017 “conference awareness”.

For the first time in a while, I’ve noticed a number of changes in the iGaming Conference schedule coming up and wanted to share them all with you so you can plan effectively.  As a side note, there are plenty of annual conferences not mentioned below that I think are worth attending, I urge you to check out our 2016 conference coverage library to get a feel for what else you might want to attend in 2017.

London Affiliate Conference moving to ExCeL

ICE and LAC always serve as the industry’s kick-start to the year, Clarion’s ICE for the entire gambling industry and iGaming Business’s LAC more specifically for the iGaming affiliate industry.  Now that Clarion has acquired iGaming Business, LAC has moved to the ExCeL so both events are now in the same location, one right after the next.

Lee Davy takes a trip down his windy memory lane to recollect what he has learned since falling head over heels in love with poker.

 The uneducated believe poker is just like American politics. It’s nothing but a game of luck where the biggest bluffer ends up winning. But when you get into Madonna’s groove, you find out that poker is not a game based on luck where the biggest bluffer wins.

It’s not even a game.

It’s a lesson in life.

South Africa’s casinos enjoyed healthy growth in 2016 but they continue to claim their biggest fear is the rise of online gambling.

This week saw the release of the latest Casino Association of South Africa (CASA) annual Survey of Casino Entertainment. CASA, whose members include Tsogo Sun, Sun International, Peermont Global and Caesars Entertainment’s London Clubs International brand, represents 36 of the country’s 38 casinos.

According to CASA, gross gambling revenue totaled R18.2b (US $1.35b) in the 2015-16 financial year, up 6.7% from last year’s figure and better than last year’s 3.4% growth rate. CASA members paid R4.9b in gaming taxes in 2015-16, representing 27% of their gaming revenue.

Gauteng remains the provincial casino revenue star, as its seven casinos generated nearly R7.5b, more than twice the R3.4b of its five competitors in KwaZulu-Natal. The Western Cape ranked third with R2.8b while the North West was well back at R1.35b.

Australian betting operators have banded together to form a new industry trade association following the demise of the Australian Wagering Council (AWC).

The AWC gave up the ghost in August after the down under divisions of UK bookies Ladbrokes and William Hill withdrew their support. The rush to the exits followed the AWC’s failed efforts to forestall the Australian government’s ban on online in-play sports betting and other curbs.

This week brought the launch of Responsible Wagering Australia (RWA), a new body espousing a code of conduct that includes responsible gambling and harm-minimization protocols. The group will also support government initiatives to reduce the potential ‘adverse influence’ of gambling during live sports broadcasts.

The RWA’s founding members include Bet365, Betfair, CrownBet, Sportsbet and Unibet. Ladbrokes and Hills have yet to sign on, apparently unconvinced that the RWA will be any more successful than the AWC in influencing Aussie pols to stop treating the online betting industry like a piñata.