Australian casino operator Crown Resorts has apparently reached the ‘bargaining’ stage of the five stages of grief over the delayed opening of its new Crown Sydney property.

Late Wednesday, Crown issued a statement acknowledging the decision earlier that day by the New South Wales Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority (ILGA) to pause approval of the gaming license for Crown Sydney, which the company hoped to open in mid-December.

Crown said it would focus on opening Crown Sydney’s non-gaming operations ‘in consultation with the ILGA.” Crown subsequently unveiled a management plan for the public Sky Deck on Crown Sydney’s 66th floor, which Crown hopes to open in March.

But in the shorter term, Crown is pressing the ILGA to permit gaming at Crown Sydney under the supervision of ILGA inspectors. Crown also pledged to honor strict anti-money laundering (AML) rules, restructure the company’s management and submit daily activity reports to the ILGA as part of this “working test.”

The European Poker Tour has its first Online Main Event winner, and that winner is Swedish player ‘WhatIfGod’ from Sweden. A former winner in other EPT in live tournaments at Prague, ‘WhatIfGod’ sealed the deal with an outstanding heads-up victory against Canadian player Timothy Adams, who incidentally holds the current record for live earnings in 2020.  

With a total of 1,304 entries comprising 924 unique players and 380 re-entries, the prizepool of $5,000,000 guaranteed was well and truly overtaken, with the eventual pot on offer as prizes totalling $6.52 million. That meant a million-dollar top prize and the action on the final day was worthy of such a title and prize money.  

The first player to leave the final table, Kazakhstani player ‘vip25459’ barely got past the velvet rope. With a short-stack and king-jack, they were all-in, but succumbed to the pocket aces of Jon Van Fleet, who came into the final table with real momentum, having made Day 2 of the partypoker Caribbean Poker Party Main Event at the weekend.  

Despite that hand, Van Fleet would be next to go, his ace-king unable to improve against the pocket jacks of Russian pro Viacheslav Buldygin. Three players had gone in less than 40 minutes when Cypriot Andreas Christoforou was busted by David Yan as Christoforou’s pocket aces were agonisingly overtaken by Yan’s ace-king. Yan, hailing from New Zealand, was running hot and his queens then cracked Brazilian player Enio Bozzano’s pocket kings to reduce the field to five.  

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

The small weight classes don’t often headline UFC main cards, but that is the case for UFC 255 on Saturday night from the organization’s Apex facility in Las Vegas as flyweight champion Deiveson Figueiredo defends his belt against Alex Perez. The main card begins at 10 p.m. ET and is available on pay-per-view.

This originally was to feature Figueiredo against former UFC bantamweight champion Cody Garbrandt (he’s currently the fourth-ranked bantamweight), but Garbrandt had to pull out in early October due to injury. Perez was already on the card to face Brandon Moreno but now gets a shot at the title.

The 32-year-old Figueiredo, from MMA-crazy Brazil, is 19-1 in his professional career with that lone loss in March 2019 via unanimous decision to Jussier Formiga. “Daico” has won four straight since. He faced Joseph Benavidez for the vacant flyweight title in February and beat Benavidez by second-round TKO (punches).

With 581 players taking part in this week’s Super MILLIONS, it was a great week to win one, and Blegium’s Davidi Kitai proved he still has a keen eye for timing as he clinched victory and won a massive $726,839 in the process.  

Costing $10,300 to enter, the GGPoker Super MILLIONS once again welcomed some of the best poker players on the planet into its online lobby, creating a prize pool worth an astronomical $5,810,000.  

With nine players assembling at the final table, there was a huge difference between the $161,097 that Russian player ‘iplaytooslow’ would earn and Kitai’s eventual top prize, and the player finishing in 9th place lasted just one hand. Niklas Astedt shoved from th small blind with ace-deuce and ‘iplaytooslow’ failed to live up to their name, making a quick call with ace-king. A deuce on the turn, however, did not reward the correct call, and the field was reduced to eight.  

Exiting in 8th place was Aleks Ponakovs, who was busted in the reverse of the first bust-out. Ponakovs moved all-in for just seven big blinds with ace-six, but when Eelis Parssinen called with king-jack, an ace on the turn helped Ponakovs’ hand but completed a Broadway straight for the Finn to leave just seven players in the hunt for the title.  

This is a guest contribution by Joonas Karhu, Chief Business Officer at Bojoko.com. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.

The highly competitive nature of the online casino sector means that operators must invest substantially, both in terms of time and money, in marketing activity if they are to acquire and convert players at scale with a favourable ROI.

Affiliates can and do play a key role in this process, and here at Bojoko we have been sending players to U.K.-licensed online casino brands for more than three years now. Over that time, we have gathered reams of data that we believe can help operators drive conversions and FTDs.

We want to share this data with operators so that they can tweak their online casino offering to better meet the preferences and needs of the players that we send or that arrive at their casino through any of the other marketing activity they undertake.

This is a guest contribution by Natalya Zheltukhina, Head of Growth: iGaming Domain at Sigma Software. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.

We always keep our hands on the pulse of what makes the gaming industry ticking and what challenges operators struggle to solve. Luckily, some of those challenges can be solved using a mixture of technology and domain experience. So, let’s discuss gaming operators’ concerns and how tech can help in detail.

Cost-reduction

An ever-green concern for literally any business is making it as cost-efficient as possible. The cost reduction or cost effectiveness requires a comprehensive corporate strategy. However, being in a loop of everyday processes, these things can be left out of the consideration. So, you need to be sure that your tools are all rooted in technology: modernization and optimization of cloud hosting infrastructure, identifying inefficient modules, legacy elements, gaps and bottlenecks, as well as the software, which is costly to maintain.

Intralot has a new group CEO who isn’t exactly new to the company’s operations. Sokratis Kokkalis founded the gaming company and serves as its executive chairman, and also now serves as its boss, as Intralot has announced that he has been reinstated as Group CEO. Christos K. Dimitriadis, who Kokkalis is replacing, will move to oversee operations in the U.S., which can definitely use an overhaul.

Kokkalis was the CEO until this past March when Dimitriadis was brought in, and will now regain control. Whether it’s too late to undo the damage done this year remains to be seen, with Intralot having lost a massive sportsbook and gaming technology deal in Turkey last year and its U.S. operations not producing what had been expected. As a whole, Intralot saw losses of almost $51 million so far this year, according to its 2020 interim report. Those losses were blamed on fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The 2019 troubles forced Kokkalis to become more active in the company, introducing sweeping changes at the highest levels of its executive component. One of these included the hiring of Dimitriadis to lead the company, but Kokkalis now appears to believe that his efforts and talents will best serve the company in a different capacity. He will reportedly lead Intralot’s continued transformation in the evolving gaming industry and will have a primary role in helping the company expand in the U.S. It isn’t clear how his involvement in that expansion will impact Byron Boothe, who was appointed Intralot’s CEO of U.S. operations this past summer. 

Intralot chose to remain almost mum on the changes, only providing a mandatory, four-sentence notice to the Athens Stock Exchange. It indicated that more details about the shifts are forthcoming, while giving Dimitriadis an “attaboy” for his hard work and dedication. It stated, “Mr. Kokkalis thanks Mr. Dimitriadis for his contribution to date and wishes him success in his future role.” Not a lot of praise for someone who is expected to take a “leading role” in developing a potentially major market like the one seen in the U.S. 

 While news is running rampant that Thanksgiving should be canceled in the U.S. this year because of COVID-19, there is at least one location that will buck the trend. Atlantic City is telling gamblers to put on their best gambling clothes and head to the city’s casinos, as these won’t be closing. However, they shouldn’t expect to find turkey with all the trimmings in the venues’ restaurants.

Casinos in several states have either now closed, or will be closing this week, temporarily because of a spike in positive COVID-19 cases in their respective states. Even New Jersey has seen an increase recently; however, Governor Phil Murphy doesn’t believe that shutting down Atlantic City’s gambling scene is warranted. In many ways, his position on keeping casinos open makes a lot of sense.

According to recent data, casinos rank 44 on the list of places where people are most likely to catch the novel coronavirus. By not closing down Atlantic City, Murphy is giving individuals a potentially safe place to go and is keeping them from possibly participating in a large community gathering where the spread of COVID-19 has been shown to be a problem. In addition, casinos have implemented health measures to help control the virus.

Murphy asserts, “We believe, based on the evidence that we have, that they’ve been able to responsibly manage their casino floors. Whether it’s through personal protective equipment, dividers, capacity management, temperature checks, review of symptoms checks with people who go onto the floor, there is not any evidence … that there is a big outbreak coming from participating on the floor.”

In the fast-moving world of gambling, sometimes you might miss news that could be important to you. To make sure you’re all caught up on gaming industry news, be it online or brick and mortar, we’re rounding up the some of the announcements and partnerships from the last week that you might have missed.

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

BetConstruct: East & West Vol. 2 to Expand Industry Horizons

Following the success of the first edition of the virtual igaming expo East & West BetConstruct has decided to open the doors of its digital event hosting platform for the industry representatives and aficionados for the second time on December 8-9. 

Macau is determined to become known as a world leader in diverse tourism and it is starting with what could be the only global industry that rivals gambling in popularity. Beginning next year, Macau will focus a lot more effort and resources on attracting sports fans following an agreement established between Macau leaders and the six licensed casino operators in the city. Each could host a major sports event every month for all of 2021.

Macau Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng explained this week that one of his top goals for 2021 is to bring international sports events to the city. He confirmed that this plan is already in motion and, in discussing the development with lawmaker Ma Chi Seng, stated that casino licensees are on board. He indicated that hosting an international sports events, or serving as a title sponsor for one, twice in the year would be the goal of each licensee, giving Macau a total of 12 events to put on the schedule. 

Ho explained, “We have been talking to the gaming concessionaires to organize two of these events for each one. This means 12 events per year that will be held not concurrently, but tentatively one per month. The gaming concessionaires provided a positive response and from the end of this year; we are already doing some events that are possible to host like the [Macau International] Marathon and the World Table Tennis Championships.”

Elsie Ao Ieong U, the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture for Macau, has reportedly already delivered a list of events that the city could bring in next year. Before any announcement is made, Ho will have to sign off on the suggestions, as he will make the ultimate decision on what types of activities Macau wants to attract. It won’t be an easy process, as the current COVID-19 situation could ultimately force changes to any potential schedule, and the Summer Olympics will be held in Tokyo next year, as well. He acknowledges that the process is going to be complex, but believes it will ultimately serve the city’s best interests. 

An initiative launched by the Clark County Education Association (CCEA) to increase the taxes paid by Las Vegas casino operators has merit, but the timing couldn’t be worse. The CCEA, the largest teachers’ union in Las Vegas, circulated a pair of petitions as it looked to gain support for a push for increased taxes, and was able to exceed its goal by more than 100% for each. If the proposals find legislative support, the additional money would go to fund educational programs from the kindergarten to the high school levels.

One petition wants to increase Nevada’s sales and use tax to 4.1% from its current 2.5%. The money collected from the increase would go toward programs defined in the guidance of the Local School Support Tax. The second petition wants to increase the gross gaming revenue (GGR) tax to 9.75% from 6.75%, and would only target those casinos who earn at least $250,000 in a particular month. That additional money would be used for different education programs.

Asking casino operators to pay 4.5% more in taxes while reeling from a massive meltdown caused by a global pandemic will certainly meet a lot of resistance. Las Vegas casinos are still scrambling to find solid ground because of COVID-19, and some analysts have predicted that a full recovery could be three or four years away. As the coronavirus continues to reappear, it could take even longer for casinos to get back to normal, and it’s likely that some will have to call it quits before the dust settles.

Nevada’s gaming industry is already scoffing at the idea. The state took in GGR of $2.3 billion in the most recent quarter, 23.5% less than it saw a year earlier. The Nevada Resort Association issued a response to the tax initiative this week, asserting, “As Nevada’s largest industry and economic engine continues to do all it can to recover and bring employees back to work, now is not the time to target the resort industry with a 44 percent tax increase that would further damage Nevada’s recovery efforts, create permanent job losses, and further jeopardize capital investment and future economic development.”

Donald Browne may live to regret giving up his position as Senior VP of Security at Imperial Pacific International (IPI) to take on the role of CEO. Browne moved into the hot seat this past July, but has had to deal with nothing but headaches since then. IPI, the casino operator behind the unstable Imperial Palace casino in Saipan, has continuously been called out for not paying its bills and possibly breaking federal law, and has even, on several occasions, been unable to pay its workers. This latter embarrassment is the target of a local lawyer, who is now pushing for Browne to be locked up for contempt of court. 

Aaron Halegua, an attorney working for seven construction employees who launched a lawsuit against IPI for lack of pay, believes jail time is warranted for Browne. The executive is said to have testified before the Gaming Committee of the House of Representatives in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), that he “oversees the entire operation” of the company and is “very familiar with the financial position of IPI and the availability of funds.” Because of this, Browne would have been completely aware of the company’s financial health and whether or not it would have been able to cover its bills at all times, but agreed to a court order to pay the workers, anyway. 

Halegua asserts, “In the present case, there is no dispute that Browne was aware of the fee award [to workers] because he submitted the sole declaration in support of IPI’s motion for an extension of time to pay the sanction. Browne also exercises control over IPI and has the authority to direct that IPI pay. Or to direct the sale of certain assets to make payment… Because Browne knew about the order and deadline for payment, [and as] he has been the top executive of IPI since July 2020, and he did not act to ensure the compliance with the order, the court should hold him in contempt.”

IPI was ordered in December of last year to pay $30,000 in legal fees and related costs tied to the ongoing dispute over wages; however, the company still hasn’t fulfilled its obligations. This past April, a court judge ruled that IPI was in contempt and tacked on a $2,000-per-day fee until the payment was made. However, the company seems more willing to continue to rack up a larger bill than try to make good on the order, and no one – not the courts, the CNMI government or the Commonwealth Casino Commission – seems willing to take more drastic, and deserved, measures against IPI.

Now that an appropriate time of mourning has past, rampant speculation has begun over who will replace long time Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek, who passed away earlier this month after handing out answers and asking for questions for 37 seasons. There’s plenty of opinions flying online, and we have odds from Bodog to help figure it out.

Alex Trebek’s picks

Trebek himself only ever named two people as potential successors, but there’s a third man who was clearly dear to him.

Jeopardy! Greatest of All Time Champion Ken Jennings leads the odds. Jennings still holds the records for longest Jeopardy! winning streak at 74 games, as well as the most money won on U.S. TV game shows ever. He was also hired as a backstage consultant for Trebek’s final season, giving him a leg up on the competition.

As more and more countries are back under some sort of lockdown to battle a second wave of COVID, we are all craving in-person interaction and must depend on digital platforms to fulfill this basic need. Entertainment has taken on a whole new meaning during this time, moving away from travel, public venues, house parties and other in-person activities and towards digital options such as social video games.

In an effort to combine human interaction and entertainment in a safe (digital) environment available to anyone, Derrek Morton and his team at FlowPlay have been working on some exciting innovations.

Morton himself has been working in the video games industry since the early 90s, “catching the bug” after going to film school and then working on a video game about making movies.

“Working in games is amazing, it uses both sides of my brain, my creative side and my technical side, it’s the perfect combination”, he said.