Indian authorities were worried about illegal gambling gatherings over the Diwali weekend, and it appears their fears were well founded. Over 100 arrests were made during the holiday, while one town attacked a journalist for fear that they would reveal their own gambling activity.

In Kamareddy, 109 were arrested on November 14, the night of Diwali. Rs 6,49,180 ($8,713) was seized from several card games, with Rs 1,06,710 ($1,432) seized from one house alone.

Seperately in Dharwad, another 18 gambling dens were raided, resulting in 65 arrests. That set of raids resulted in RS 49 lakh ($65 thousand) being seized. Among the arrested were political leaders, businessmen and hoteliers.

The district SP of the Dharwad Rural police had warned card clubs not to offer services during the Diwali period. That warning didn’t make it to some policemen, as four constables were found in one of the dens.

Suncity Group Holdings is excited and anxious to get its next pet project in the Philippines underway. It is going to build a new casino resort in the Westside City Project in Manila and its lock on a 45-year contract to operate the property gives it a huge boost of security. Suncity regularly keeps the industry abreast of what’s going on with the progress for the resort, and has just given its latest. It now knows who will be managing the construction and development of the site, having chosen Megawide Construction Corp. to lead the way.

Megawide made two agreements for the project, according to a Suncity filing (pdf) with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The first will see the construction giant be in charge of the construction of the basement, podium and tower of the resort’s main hotel and casino and is worth around $83.19 million (HK$644.9 million). The second will cover excavation, pile cap, which forms part of a deep foundation and is often used when the ground under the construction site is soft, and lateral support construction. This agreement is worth $47 million (HK$364.3 million), bringing the total benefit to Megawide to around $130 million (HK$1 billion).

Megawide is set to get a huge chunk of change this holiday season. Suncity subsidiary SunTrust Home Developers, which will own the resort, will pay the construction company 25% of the first agreement and 28% of the second before the end of the year, for a total of almost $34 million to be delivered before December 31. The remainder will be paid over time, as different milestones of the construction are completed.

SunTrust is teamed up with Megaworld Corporation for the new resort project through an additional layer, Fortune Noble. Megaworld owns 43.5% of SunTrust, while Suncity controls 51%, while the remaining 5.5% is owned by Aurora Securities. It’s not difficult to imagine that Megaworld played a part in securing the contract with Megawide, since the two have worked on several projects (pdf) together in the past and the two have been intrinsically mixed in several ways.

Genting Singapore has returned to profit, announcing SG$54.4 million ($40.4 million) Q3 2020. That’s a big improvement on their Q2 loss of SG$163.3 million (U.S.$121.2 million), but still down year over year.

Covid-19 travel restrictions continued to cut off travel to the casino, seeing the resort down 66% year-on-year. But anything had to be an improvement over Q2, which saw a suspension of operations.

That doesn’t make year-over year drops any less pretty. Revenues as a whole were down 50% to SG$301.0 million ($223.3 million), with non-gaming revenues taking the huge drop of 74%, from SG$234,607 million ($174.4 million) to SG$59.9 million ($44.4 million). Gaming revenue was also down by 41% to SG$212.9 million ($158.0 million).

Adjusted EBITDA (Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) in Q3 fell 46% from 2019 to SG$149.0 million ($110.5 million), but improving from the Q2 loss of SG$84.9 million ($63.0 million) in Q2.

Queensland will put everything on the line in the final State of Origin Match of 2020. The Maroons will face a confident New South Wales (NSW) side at their spiritual home, Suncorp Stadium, with the series locked at one game apiece.

NSW will enter the match as favourites after comprehensively outplaying the Maroons in Game Two of the series, recording an impressive 34-10 victory. Queensland will be quietly confident of overturning the result, with playmaker Cameron Munster named to take the field.

Despite the one-sided result in Sydney, NSW will be nervous heading into Game Three in Brisbane. NSW have lost the last seven Origin deciders before their 2019 series win and prior to that last won a decider in Brisbane in 2005. Historically the numbers sit in Queensland’s favour, as the team that claimed the opening game has gone onto win the series 28 times in the last 38 years.

New South Wales coach Brad Fittler has resisted the urge to include Melbourne Storm Churchill medallist Ryan Papenhuyzen and instead named an unchanged side.

Atlantic City casino gambling revenue suffered only a modest year-on-year dip in October, although the prospect of a return to double-digit declines looms large.

Figures released Friday by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) show AC’s nine casinos generated brick-and-mortar slots and table game revenue of $186.1m in October, an 8% decline from the same month last year and $3.9m below September 2020’s result.

October’s decline was largely due to decreased slots activity, which slid nearly 10% to $132.85m, while table games fell only 2.8% to $53.25m. For the year-to-date, slots revenue is down 45% to $887.9m, while tables are off 48.2% to $331m, for an overall 46% decline to $1.21b.

October’s picture was far less grim after you add the $118m generated by the casinos’ online gambling and sports betting operations. Thanks to those contributions, October’s result was up 14.2% to $304.1m, although the year-to-date figure remains down 22.7% at $2.11b.

Live poker events have been few and far between in 2020 for obvious, COVID-19 related reasons. So it will come as both as a surprise and a relief to many poker fans that three one-day events will take place at the world-famous ARIA Casino venue in early December.

The high roller scene has moved online from live venues in the past six months, and has been a huge success, with tournaments such as the GGPoker Super Million and EPT Online Series giving the elite players in the mindsport opportunities to prove themselves against the best in the business.

The three forthcoming events will take place live at ARIA casino in Las Vegas on December 3rd, 4th and 5th, with each tournament costing $10,000 to enter. Each of the events are single-day format, with a winner on each night come what may.

If you thought it might be like the recent Phil Hellmuth vs. Antonio Esfandiari ‘High Stakes Duel’, where both players played without masks for their third and final bout – which Hellmuth won to take the $400,000 and run – then you’d be wrong. All players and staff present at the venue will be ‘masked up’ throughout the events, to minimize the potential spread of COVID-19.

After what must have been a tricky few starting sessions for Daniel Negreanu to take, Kid Poker bounced back in spectacular fashion this weekend to move into a slight lead in his grudge heads-up match with Doug Polk.

There was no love lost between the two poker legends in the beginning. Polk was going to back up the truck, load up with Daniel’s millions and cruise off into the sunset, saying ‘Sayonara’ to poker for possibly the last time.

Instead, and the to the delight of poker fans who want to see a real match between two players who both have a chance of winning, Negreanu has battled back and will have given his supporters real heart that this could remain a close match right up to the latter stages of the match.

The story so far is summarized fairly simply, with around 7% of the total hands played so far. That is to say 1,737 hands of the 25,000 that are the maximum, as there is a clause in place for either man to walk away after 12,500 hands.

The World Series of Poker looked like it might have downed guarantees for the winter and was building a run-up to next summer’s potential live return to the felt. Instead, the surprise news from Las Vegas – via the Czech Republic – came this weekend when the WSOP Main Event Hybrid version was announced.

As the WSOP revealed on their official website, the World Series Main Event is back, only this time in a very different way than ever before.

In the summer of 2019, Hossein Ensan won the WSOP Main Event. In the summer of 2020, Stoyan Madanzhiev took the top prize online. But what will take place later this year in December is a ‘hybrid’ – a mix of live and online poker that will test the mettle of players from around the world.

Costing $10,000 to enter, the World Series of Poker promise that this event will crown the 51st poker world champion, and in doing so, they are telling up that Madanzhiev’s title doesn’t count as the World Championship – a source of debate for many on social media since this hybrid tournament was proclaimed.

New Jersey’s online gambling and sports betting market obliterated all previous financial records in the month of October, and it wasn’t even close.

Figures released Friday by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) show the state’s online casino and poker licensees generated revenue of $93.45m in October, more than twice the sum reported in October 2019 and nearly $6m higher than the state’s previous monthly best set this August.

October’s online casino revenue came in just under $91m, a 108.7% year-on-year improvement, while online poker settled for rising 53.5% to $2.5m. For the year-to-date, overall online revenue is up nearly 103% to over $779m, with casino up 103.4% to $745.7m and poker rising 88.5% to $33.4m.

As one might expect, individual property records also fell like dominoes, led by the Golden Nugget’s $28.1m in online casino revenue. The fight for second place was won by the Borgata and its BetMGM partner, which collected $22.1m (of which $724k came via poker), narrowly ahead of Resorts Digital Gaming and its DraftKings/FoxBet partners’ $21.6m ($842k from PokerStars’ poker offering).

Norway’s gambling monopoly said it didn’t witness any mass increase in problematic online casino activity during this spring’s pandemic lockdown, partly due to the state-run company’s spending limits.

On Friday, Norsk Tipping issued a report on Norwegian gambling activity after the country declared a national state of emergency on March 13 due to COVID-19. This resulted in the closure of all retail gambling operations, including the Multix and Belago slots halls, while sports betting suffered from the suspension of major league play.

Lotteries reported a minor surge in activity in April as other gambling options dried up, although this is a seasonal phenomenon due to Easter-related promotions. Lottery sales quickly settled back to a more normal level by May and remained there through September.

Norsk Tipping’s Oddsen sports betting product reported sales plunging to “a pale minimum” in April, as a betting slate of eSports and Belarusian football “did not appeal” to most bettors, many of whom “disappeared from all gaming when their main interest disappeared.”

Sports betting operator DraftKings lost nearly $348m in the third quarter as the cutthroat US customer acquisition frenzy more than tripled its sales and marketing costs.     

Figures released Friday show DraftKings generated revenue of $132.8m in the three months ending September 30, nearly twice the sum it earned in the same period last year, although revenue was up a more modest 42% if you assume the company’s acquisition of the SBTech wagering tech platform was a done deal at this time last year.

Despite the revenue surge, DraftKings reported a net loss of $347.7m in Q3, as sales & marketing costs more than tripled year-on-year to $203.3m as the company expanded into additional US betting states and fought furiously with rivals to sign up customers in time for the launch of a new NFL season.

DraftKings boasted just over 1m average monthly unique payers in Q3, which includes not just sports bettors but also daily fantasy sports and online casino customers. That represented a 64% rise from Q3 2019’s average.

It feels like we could all use a refresher course on how we communicate, specially as we continue to adapt to video calls during the Covid-19 pandemic. At Day 3 of the iGaming NEXT ONLINE: Adventure of Change conference, Keynote speaker Alexander Grabner-Jarlung, TED Speaking Coach, Director, Partner Consultant & PowerPoint Specialist offered exactly that, talking about how we can ‘Optimize communication in your workplace.’

The pitfalls of communicating in the workplace are clear to anyone who’s experienced them. “Going into a meeting, we knew that there was going to be a bad PowerPoint, that the meeting structure would be bad, and you didn’t really understand why you were attending that meeting,” said Grabner-Jarlung.

The speaking coach promised he would offer a few important tips on how to make meetings more valuable, and get your point across more successfully. “You will always be the prime of every meeting. You will be fully responsible for the rest of your life of the outcome of every single meeting,” he said. “You are the one that will make that optimization.”

The problem with so many meetings is that they just don’t offer a clear reason for why we should care. 27% of respondents to a survey, Grabner-Jarlung noted, have fallen asleep during a video call. That’s because our brains are designed to filter out useless information, and if we aren’t properly introduced to why we should care about something, we simply won’t.

Despite recent indications that the gaming scene in Macau is on the mend, there are indications that gross gaming revenue (GGR) next year could still continue to be in a slump, and this has local casino employees concerned about their future. The Macau Gaming Enterprises Staff Association just conducted a survey to determine exactly how concerned they are, and the results aren’t optimistic. Of the 611 employees polled, 80% said they are somewhat pessimistic about their job security. That’s 20% more than what was recorded when the same survey was conducted a year earlier. 

The ongoing crisis caused by COVID-19 is taking its toll and Macau has taken in only about 30% of the GGR it reported in 2019. With the immediate outlook predicting similar results, there is the possibility that casinos will need to make additional cuts just to stay afloat, and any forced exits will hit all levels. Even senior employees who have been in the business for ten years or more are in a precarious situation and this segment was found to be the most concerned of them all. 

The lack of confidence over their future job status is justified. The same group reports that almost 60% of casino employees have had to take unpaid leave. The majority of these have been those who have been in the local gambling business longer, and the forced vacations come after Macau’s government tried to convince casino operators to go easy on their employees. However, with monthly GGR drops of up to 90%, cuts had to be made somewhere, and those employees making more money quickly became targets. 

Wynn Resorts is one of the operators to explore ways to reduce costs and has confirmed that a number of senior management will not be returning to Macau. It told GGRAsia that it was preparing to forego renewal of employee contracts for “overseas middle- and senior-management” employees, but didn’t specify how many would be shown the door. The company argues that the employment termination is a result not only of the change in Macau’s gaming environment, but also due to changing employment laws coming to the city.

Cyprus put its local commercial activity on a forced break earlier this year, just like everywhere else, to help try to prevent COVID-19 from taking over the Mediterranean island. Casinos there were included in the list of forced closures and they started to reopen after just a couple of months, with Melco Resorts and Entertainment, which is behind five gambling properties on the tiny island, bringing four of its venues back to life in June. The run was good while it lasted, but it has now come to an end, as Cyprus is returning to lockdown mode to prevent a new outbreak of COVID-19 from getting worse.

Melco’s local subsidiary, Cyprus Casinos (C2), announced that it is going to stop operations at two of its venues to thwart COVID-19’s attempts to regain control of the nation. C2 Paphos shut down at 3 PM yesterday, while C2 Limassol turned off its lights two hours later. Both venues are expected to remain closed through the end of the month. For the time being, C2 Nicosia and C2 Ayia Napa will remain open; however, this could change if the situation warrants further restrictions. The fifth venue, Larnaca is in a transition to a new home and has remained closed during the coronavirus debacle.

Yesterday, Cyprus had 185 new COVID-19 cases to deal with, bringing to 6,646 the total number. The number of infections in some regions has jumped from 28% to 70% over the past month and a half, and Cyprus has now ordered a ban on all public gatherings, as well as shut down its school system and ordered religious services to be held without physical participation. With a population of 875,000 living in clusters around the island, controlling any new outbreaks of the virus become more difficult.

Melco has been busy building a massive casino resort in Cyprus, the City of Dreams Mediterranean in Limassol. The current gambling property there is just a temporary facility while the larger, $650-million resort is completed. However, the COVID-19 situation has taken its toll on the company, both in Cyprus and elsewhere, and it has reported major net losses in 2020. It reached out to offer as much as $1 billion in senior notes to investors this past August, and the new closures in Cyprus are going to impact its ability to stay on a dedicated path to recovery.