As with most places, Iowa has strict rules when it comes to gambling. Responsible gaming is one of the hottest topics in the ecosystem now, and Iowa has several measures in place to help protect gamblers from themselves. One is the ability to self-exclude from any type of gambling, and operators are required to regularly update their platforms with self-exclusion data provided by the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission (IRGC). The gaming regulator already dropped the hammer on DraftKings for not following the rules, and has now let it fly on two more. Both PointsBet and Betfred have been hit with fines for violating Iowa’s self-exclusion policies.

By law, gaming operators in Iowa have seven days to update their databases after the IRGC publishes its newest list. DraftKings had failed to do so, which is why it received a fine of $5,000. PointsBet has also been hit with the same fine for the same reason. The sports gambling operator, which is partnered with Catfish Bend Casino, has been in Iowa for around a year and a half and should know better by now. PointsBet admits it failed the system and IRGC administrator Brian Ohorilko asserts that the company has assured the regulator that it won’t happen again. This was the first offense in violation of the rule committed by PointsBet.

Betfred was found guilty of the same infraction and was also handed a $5,000 fine. Ohorilko explains that an employee at the company, who reportedly is responsible for downloading the IRGC and updating Betfred’s database, was late in fulfilling his duties, resulting in the fine. As with PointsBet, it was a first offense for the operator after having launched in the state earlier this year through a partnership it signed with Grand Falls Casino.

While a one-time fine of $5,000 won’t do a lot of damage to the sportsbooks’ bottom lines, repeated violations could have ugly outcomes. Regulators everywhere could decide to pull operating licenses if operators demonstrate patterns of non-compliance, and this could also lead to having license applications in new areas rejected when the companies try to expand. As rapidly as sports gambling is expanding across the US, there is still a certain degree of opposition to the activity and, with the right support, anti-sports gambling lobbyists could use the violations as a mechanism to prevent further expansion.

While Macau is taking a beating from COVID-19, there is a good chance that, when it rebounds, some casino investors are going to see significant gains. One of these is the CEO of Tak Chun Group, Levo Chan. The head of the Macau junket operator increased his holdings in Macau Legend Development company this past September when he purchased a little more than 20% of the casino company, and has now taken (pdf) an even larger position through a new stake acquisition. In doing so, he also assumed the role of co-chairman of the company. 

This past September, Chan decided to grab 20.65% of Macau Legends for $165.2 million, with the goal of continuing to increase his holdings. He has now done that after purchasing an additional 771.24 million shares, representing 12.44% of the issued share capital. In return, Chan is going to have to pay $104.5 million, but he probably got the better deal. On November 17, the casino company’s stock was trading at $0.15 on the OTC market, and fell to $0.13 by November 19. Following the COVID-19 fiasco, it’s possible the stock returns to its five-year high of $0.20, which it recorded in June 2018.

As with the previous stock purchase, Chan isn’t able to touch the holdings controlled by certain executives at Macau Legends, including those of founder and Chairman David Chow, CEO Melinda Chan or fellow directors Sheldon Trainer and Li Chi Keung. Nor can he buy those shares controlled by Madam Lam Fong Ngo, Chow’s mother, or those of Vast Field Investments Ltd. (VMI), a subsidiary of SJM Holdings. Instead, his wholly-owned investment firm that continues to purchase the shares, Perfect Achiever Group Ltd., will work with executives in what the group is calling the Offeror Concert Party Group to lead the company. That group, which doesn’t include VMI, now controls 79.88% of Macau Legends.

With Chan taking over as co-chair and executive director, other high-level moves are being seen, as well. Tsang Ka Hung, the chief financial officer for Tak Chun Group’s junket operations, is also going to serve as executive director. At the same time, Chow is no longer a director of the company, but will serve as co-chair and as a non-executive director. Melinda Chan will continue in her role as CEO and Donald Chow Wan Hok, Sheldon Trainor-DeGirolamo, Carl Tong Ka Wing and Mark Fong Chung will no longer be directors following their resignations.

Earlier this month, US private equity firm Apollo Global Management crossed the border into Canada in order to make an offer on Great Canadian Gaming Corp. (GCG). It was reportedly willing to buy all of the casino operator’s shares in return for $2.52 billion, and the idea had already received a certain amount of blowback from shareholders after GCG apparently signed off on the deal. Now, one of the company’s leading shareholders is speaking up and is planning on doing everything in its power to keep the acquisition from going through unless Apollo adds a few extra numbers to the proposed figure.

Apollo’s offer includes a 35% premium over GCG’s trading price on the day the announcement was made. However, Burgundy Asset Management, which controls 9.5% of GCG’s equity, wants more, according to Bloomberg, and is taking sides with GCG’s two largest shareholders to prevent the deal from moving forward. Burgundy accuses Apollo of trying to be “opportunistic” with its offer, given the weakened state of casino gambling in Ontario, and is drumming up support to prevent the deal from going through at its current price point.

David Vanderwood and Andrew Iu, two portfolio managers at Burgundy, said in a letter about the arrangement, “We believe Great Canadian’s Ontario assets are irreplaceable properties for which Apollo’s C$39 [$30] offer reflects only a fraction of their potential value.” If the use of “fraction” is a clue, Apollo will have to be ready to make a serious jump in the amount it’s willing to spend to purchase the assets.

Opportunism is one of the fundamental components of business, so Burgundy can’t be surprised. However, it is already gaining support to prevent the acquisition from going through and reportedly has two other shareholders, investment firms Madison Avenue Partners and Breach Inlet Capital, in its corner. They hold a weaker position than Burgundy, but combining forces will give the opponents a much larger voice. That voice will be added to that of BloombergSen Inc. and CI Financial Corp., GCG’s largest shareholders and two entities who have already been vocal about their disdain over the deal.

Europe still hasn’t fully taken advantage of Integrated Resorts (IRs), at least not to the extent that Las Vegas or Asia has. The opening panel of Day 2 at SiGMA Europe explored the possibility of Europe embracing IRs, and how it should do it.

“It is the integrated resort that has made Las Vegas resilient,” said Andrew Tottenham, Managing Director of Tottenham & Co. He explained that decades ago, operators in Las Vegas realized that the diversity of an IR, with its clubs, restaurants, hotels and more, would help it continue to bring in revenue even when it was no longer the dominant casino city of the world. And it’s paid off, even as casinos have spread across America and the world.

But Europe doesn’t have anything like that. Macau and other Asian cities have massive IRs, but Europe still has small casinos, which Alidad Tash, Managing Director of 2NT8 Limited, likened to 7/11 convenience stores. “It’s too stuffy, and its tiny,” he said.

“Europe doesn’t realize that an integrated resort is so much more gorgeous, so much more expansive, so much more elegant than what a typical European casino is,” he noted.

The lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic, and regulator reactions to it, still weigh heavy on European sportsbooks. Our very own Rebecca Liggero Fontana moderated a roundtable on the topic at SiGMA Europe, and found the positives and negatives that came from each.

On the plus side, sports books found products that worked when there was very little other option. “Virtual sports and esports, and those type of verticals, are now significantly bigger than what they used to be,” said Jesper Svensson, CEO of Betsson. “So you can see that the expansion of the offering has had an important role.”

“I would say that innovation is perhaps not the bigger driver, it’s just the traditional products that are getting more and more interest, if I see the trends I’m looking at,” he added.

More than just products though, the cooperation of the industry helped get iGaming through it. “What I found was, there was a lot of moral support from everybody around,” said Rob Dowling, CCO of Singular. “Everybody was willing to have really nice, long conversations and giving advice. Not just the usual competitors, and we look at each other and talk at conferences, and ‘Oh, I’m bigger than him,’ whatever. It was more a level of, let’s sit down, let’s have a conversation over a cup of tea or a beer on Friday via Skype, and let’s see how we can fix this problem, let’s see how we can move forward.”

Figuring out what slots to host on your platform can be a daunting task, with thousands of options and hundreds of suppliers. It gets even harder when you figure in localization, emerging trends and customer demands. To understand how Hero Gaming does it, our Becky Liggero Fontana spoke with CCO Sam Brown.

Hero Gaming has a portfolio of 3,000 slots titles, provided by 111 different game studios, with 100 new games added every month. They have 17 different languages, 9 websites, and a lot of work to do in deciding what should be featured where. Liggero Fontana asked how Brown decides what new slots games to take on. He answered:

“The obvious ones are obviously the region, what type of audience or theme the slot can attract itself to. So these are sort of some of the more obvious variables, and you’ll quite often see themes and clusters especially really obvious ones, like Easter games Christmas games, Mega Waves games, bonus feature games. We also look for games that are trending well on our existing websites. If we see one or two of them performing, we will try and jump on those trends quite quickly and go through our sort of extensive portfolio of suppliers and try and find more.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRgfl5dbMDoVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Sam Brown talks about emerging trends in slots (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRgfl5dbMDo)

The latest winner in the list of Caribbean Poker Party success stories has been confirmed as German pro, Jan-Eric Schwippert. Schwippert, who has over $6 million in live winnings, last night won the 7th event of the CPP 2020 Online Series by taking down the Warm-Up for a whopping $100,273 in total prizes.  

Day 1c was a turbo feeder straight into Day 2, which helped the field swell way past the $500,000 guarantee. The final number of total entries was boosted by 326 players from that flight, meaning that there was $631,000 up for grabs in total. With online regular Pedro Padilha leading the 69 remaining Day 1c players into the Day 2 action, the final day of the event was fast and furious stuff, featuring Day 1a and Day 1b chip leaders Klaus Mortensen and Tom Delaine. 

The final table played out in dramatic fashion as Schwippert got the win against some fine opposition, with the bounty element of the competition really coming into its own to provide some thrilling final table action.  

First to depart the nine-player table was Yevgeny Fidchuk from Russia, who won $9,095 in total when he crashed out before anyone else. He was followed to the virtual rail by Day 1b chip leader Tom Delaine, whose $8,109 in bounty prizes meant he actually cashed for more than Austrian poker pro Hannes Speiser in 7th place. With Patrice Brandt exiting in 6th place and Daniél Nagy from Hungary busting in 5th, the aggression really ramped up in the final four, with American Ken Smaron and Argentinian Ramiro Petrone both departing for $29,654 and $45,490 respectively, the stage was set for a heads-up battle to saviour.  

Colombia’s gambling market is losing the man who helped guide the country to becoming the first South American market to formally legalize and regulate online play.

This week, Juan B. Pérez Hidalgo, president of Colombia’s gambling regulatory body Coljuegos, relinquished the role he’s held for nearly five years. Taking his place is César Augusto Valencia, administrator at the Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla and a business graduate of Pennsylvania’s Drexel University, although a man with no obvious gambling experience.

Some Colombian media outlets had reported that Perez’s time was running short over a month ago. Those outlets also said Perez has been asked to vacate the role by Minister of Finance Alberto Carrasquilla Barrera for unspecified ‘political’ reasons.

During Perez’s tenure, Colombia approved online gambling legislation in 2016 and issued its first online license to Aquila Global’s Wplay.co site the following year. A flood of other operators soon followed, with Grupo Vinnare becoming the 18th licensee late last year (although only 16 platforms are currently active).

Cambodia keeps busting unauthorized online gambling operators, while the government is adamant that the legal option is never, ever, EVER coming back. 

On Tuesday, the Phnom Penh Post reported that police in Cambodia’s capital had arrested 10 foreign nationals following raids on two locations in a gated community suspected of hosting an illegal online gambling operation.

While the raids resulted in the seizure of the usual complement of computers, phones and other tricks of the trade, police are still interrogating the arrested suspects, apparently convinced that there are additional members of the operation that remain at large.

After developing a reputation as a thriving hub for Asian-facing online gambling operators, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen announced plans in August 2019 to ban online gambling by the start of 2020. While initial reports were that the ban was a success, later reports suggested that not all Cambodian casinos were observing the ban.

Casinos in the Indian state of Goa have only just resumed operations but have already raised the ire of local residents who fear a pandemic resurgence spurred by reckless tourist gamblers.

Goa casinos – both the floating and land-based kind – were given the all-clear to resume operations as of November 1 following seven months of COVID-19 lockdown, but only at 50% capacity to minimize the likelihood of further pandemic spread among customers and staff.

Clearly there was significant pent-up demand, as the onshore offices and embarkation points of the floating casinos have quickly become a sore spot with local residents. Horrified locals report scores of gamblers clustering in groups on the streets outside the ships, most without wearing face masks or maintaining appropriate social distancing measures.

Uday Madkaikar, mayor of the city of Panaji in which locals board the floating casinos, said this past weekend that he would convene a meeting with casino operators on Monday (23) to discuss the lack of adherence to medical safeguards the casinos are supposed to be observing as a condition of their reopening.

Casinos in the Indian state of Goa have only just resumed operations but have already raised the ire of local residents who fear a pandemic resurgence spurred by reckless tourist gamblers.

Goa casinos – both the floating and land-based kind – were given the all-clear to resume operations as of November 1 following seven months of COVID-19 lockdown, but only at 50% capacity to minimize the likelihood of further pandemic spread among customers and staff.

Clearly there was significant pent-up demand, as the onshore offices and embarkation points of the floating casinos have quickly become a sore spot with local residents. Horrified locals report scores of gamblers clustering in groups on the streets outside the ships, most without wearing face masks or maintaining appropriate social distancing measures.

Uday Madkaikar, mayor of the city of Panaji in which locals board the floating casinos, said this past weekend that he would convene a meeting with casino operators on Monday (23) to discuss the lack of adherence to medical safeguards the casinos are supposed to be observing as a condition of their reopening.

The Philippines’ gambling market remains a shadow of its former glories, while locally licensed online gambling activity apparently remains a state secret. 

Figures released this week by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) show the local gaming sector generated gross revenue of P17.66b (US$367m) in the three months ending September 30, barely one-quarter of the P65.4b generated in the same period last year.

However, the Q3 2020 sum is a significant improvement from the P2.4b the market generated in the three months ending June 30, a period in which nearly all gambling operations – both land-based and online – were closed due to the local impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

PAGCOR became increasingly stingy with its statistics as the pandemic took hold, but the Q3 report represents a new nadir. Unlike the year’s first two quarterly reports, the regulator didn’t even provide year-to-date totals this time. Instead, the Q3 figures are simply replicated in the ‘total’ column. Insightful, it ain’t.

The Caribbean Poker Party Main Event had already seen 490 players put up the $5,300 buy-in on Day 1a of the tournament, but on Day 1b, that total got even higher, with 547 players paying the entry fee and pitting their poker wits against the rest of the world.

The partypoker CPP 2020 Online Series has been very successful so far, and those numbers meant that the $5 million guarantee, with the prizepool set at $5,185,000… for now. Players will have until a few minutes before 7pm GMT tonight to enter on Day 2 as play then goes down to a winner. 

With 18 levels in the can on Day 1b, it was Peruvian superstar Diego Ventura who led the 86 players who emerged claiming a Day 2 seat. With a chip-stack of 18.7 million chips, Ventura was clear of other big names such as  Ramiro Petrone (15,372,144), Daniel Colpoys (15,261,296), and EPT regular Anton Wigg (14,536,280). With partypoker ambassadors Anatoly Filatov (12,991,576) and Ludovic Geilich (3,431,076) both going through with differing stack sizes, Australia’s current in-form high roller Kahle Burns  stacking up 10,732,793 and 2020 crusher Timothy Adams sneaking into the counts, there are plenty of luminaries who will be scrapping it out for the big money in the Main Event as the tournament progresses.

The presence of Ventura is an exciting one on its own merits, with the Peruvian the #1 player in the country of his birth and a South American poker hero. We’ve seen him in live action ourselves, and he makes for a fearsome opponent, with a dead-eye stare and all the skills to pay the poker bills. Ventura will be a tough nut to crack when Day 2 does finally commence.

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

Usually the best Friday of college football action each regular season is Black Friday – i.e. that shopping holiday the day after American Thanksgiving. That’s this Friday in Week 13 and there are a handful of ranked teams in action.

From the Big 12 at noon ET, No. 15 Iowa State visits No. 20 Texas. The latter was off in Week 12, although that wasn’t the plan for the Longhorns as their game at Kansas was postponed to December 12 because of COVID-19 issues with the Jayhawks. This will be the home finale against Texas, which has kept its chances of reaching the Big 12 title game alive with a three-game winning streak. However, a loss here and the rumors of Coach Tom Herman being fired will return in force.

Iowa State controls its destiny to reach the Big 12 Championship Game and will get there for sure by winning out. Coach Matt Campbell’s team still could with a loss. Texas is -1.5 and covered the past four in this series.

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

Usually the best Friday of college football action each regular season is Black Friday – i.e. that shopping holiday the day after American Thanksgiving. That’s this Friday in Week 13 and there are a handful of ranked teams in action.

From the Big 12 at noon ET, No. 15 Iowa State visits No. 20 Texas. The latter was off in Week 12, although that wasn’t the plan for the Longhorns as their game at Kansas was postponed to December 12 because of COVID-19 issues with the Jayhawks. This will be the home finale against Texas, which has kept its chances of reaching the Big 12 title game alive with a three-game winning streak. However, a loss here and the rumors of Coach Tom Herman being fired will return in force.

Iowa State controls its destiny to reach the Big 12 Championship Game and will get there for sure by winning out. Coach Matt Campbell’s team still could with a loss. Texas is -1.5 and covered the past four in this series.

UK National Lottery operator Camelot posted near-record sales in the first half of its fiscal year despite retail disruptions caused by COVID-19.

Figures released Tuesday show Camelot UK Lotteries Ltd generated sales of £3.85b in the six months ending September 26, a 1.7% decline from the previous year’s fiscal H1, although that period represented the company’s all-time high-water mark in H1 revenue terms. Contributions to good causes fell 1.5% to £863.7m.

The H1 stats were saved from a much greater decline by Camelot’s “urgent interventions” as the UK government’s pandemic response forced many lottery retailers to shut their doors. Camelot campaigned hard to remind players that digital options abounded while adding additional technical support to onboard newbies, resulting in 1.3m new online registrations.

That customer surge led to record digital sales of £1.62b, an increase of £455m from the same period last year, with mobile’s share of that sum gaining £380m to a record £1.13b. Camelot lowered the minimum deposit threshold to encourage digital virgins, while simultaneously pushing a ‘Dream Big, Play Small’ message that the company said resulted in digital average weekly spend “remaining consistent” over H1.

Nevada casinos posted a modest gaming revenue increase from September to October, but new COVID-19 restrictions have the mayor of Las Vegas calling the state’s governor a dictator.

Figures released Tuesday by the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) show statewide casino gaming revenue of slightly under $822.7m, down 19.5% from the same month last year and a mere $1.6m higher than the state reported in September 2020.

The brunt of October’s decline came via the Las Vegas Strip, which reported revenue falling 30.2% to $375.8m, while downtown Vegas slipped 22.7% to $52.8m. The picture was far less bleak outside Clark County, with areas like Reno and Lake Tahoe posting decent annual growth.

Statewide slots revenue was down 19% to $565.8m, while the ‘table, counter & card games’ segment fell 20.4% to $256.8m. Baccarat revenue rose 4.6% to $59.3m and mini-baccarat gained 5.2% to $7.2m, but all other table games save bingo were broadly negative, led by blackjack ($60.2m, -24.8%), craps ($27.6m, -13%) and roulette ($18.5m, -34.4%).