Upon signing the deal, Julian Graves, Managing Director of Clarion’s gaming division, commented, “We are really excited about the move to ExCeL. The huge investments they have made in the last 12 months in their facilities and infrastructure, the upgrades to the Docklands Light Railway and Jubilee line, the Olympics legacy, as well as their close proximity to London City Airport means that ExCeL is the right venue to enable us to meet our ambitions to further grow ICE and our international audience, to ensure it remains the leading global B2B Gaming event in the industry.”

The deal runs for five years with the first show taking place from 5-7 February 2013. We can only speculate as to how crazy Fire and ICE has gotten by then. If this year’s anything to go by then expect anything.

Meanwhile, William Hill and the Racing Post have gotten themselves rather excited and may be overcome by a fountain of joy when the millionth bet is placed using their mobile app. It was expected that the bet would be placed on Saturday afternoon. As we haven’t heard anything, we can only speculate that they passed the milestone and celebrated by sitting in a branch of William Hill with 24 cases of Special Brew for the rest of the weekend.

Michael Byrne, head of mobile at William Hill, commented late last week that, “At 3pm on Friday we had taken on 983,198 bets. So we’re expecting to breach the million mark at some stage on Saturday.”

He continued, “The Racing Post, Shake-A-Bet, Sportsbook and Match Predictor Apps have all contributed to an 800% year-on-year increase in our mobile turnover. Mobile betting now accounts for around 5% of our online turnover and we’re expecting that percentage to keep rising.”

More proof there, if you really needed it, that mobile is where it’s at, bitches! The millionth customer

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The hope is that their app, that is available for the iPhone, iPad and Android, will continue to see a period of growth.

Christian Rajter, CEO of Mobenga also said, “We are thrilled to be have been chosen by one of the biggest and most expansive companies in the UK market. Sky Bet is a well-known and respected brand and as a part of the BskyB group they are in unique position to offer a complete interactive service to their audience, supplying the best mobile sport experience.”

It has also been claimed that Racing Post’s Cheltenham Festival app was the most downloaded sports app in the iTunes Store during the festival earlier this year. eGaming Review reports that the app, launched in conjunction with Push Technology, reached more than 60,000 downloads during the festival.

The guys over at Intralot Italia have it right. Today they announced that they’ll be sponsoring the one world championship where it’s perfectly ok to stare at scantily-clad women all day. For the second year running, Intralot has signed up to sponsor FIVB Beach Volleyball Swatch World Championships in Rome from June 13th to 20th and they will have a booth at the event in order to take bets. Whether it will manned by women dressed up as beach volleyball players is not yet known.

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Today marks the full release of their real money poker app for the iPhone, the first to be available through Apple’s App Store. It will allow users to choose between playing for money and playing for free and will feature the ever-popular Texas hold’em variation of poker.

“Thanks to the bwin iPhone poker app, our customers can, for the first time ever, show what they’ve got in the world’s biggest poker network via the popular iPhone platform,” explains Berthold Kao, in charge of Product Management RNG & Mobile at bwin.

Over the next few weeks we’ll also start to see the disconnect between what they’re saying in public against what the actual merger documents actually say.

William Hill Online is another company putting weight behind a push into the mobile sector and has released a new version of their App with rival operating system, Android.

The new App is quicker than the old version and will still allow customers to place bets and manage their William Hill sports book account. Hills also announced the launch of an Android version of their popular horseracing App, in association with Racing Post. 200,000 customers snapped it up on the iPhone and they will hope the Android version is just as successful.

“Our new optimised Android app’s are big additions to our mobile offering,” said Michael Byrne, Head of Mobile at William Hill Online, “Some of our competitors have rushed to embrace iPhone, but have neglected the many customers who have embraced Android. This new app opens up our mobile sportsbook to a growing customer base and gives them a experience as good as any.”

“Our recent product enhancements have driven strong growth over the last few months, and the response from our customer base has been very positive. In 2010, we experienced an 800% increase in bets, 828% increase in turnover, and a 900% rise in unique users.”

They certainly can’t be accused of having a slow news day over at William Hill.

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Sportech plans to appeal a recent ruling that the betting company is not owed any refund over taxes paid on its Spot The Ball game. In April, Sportech had filed a claim stating that the game, which is played by over 40k punters each week, was a game of chance and thus shouldn’t be subject to VAT. Despite this belief, Sportech had somehow felt it proper to pay tax on the game for the past 17 years, but now they wanted the £40m they’d paid out returned with interest (which could have brought the sum to £150m). Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs effectively said ‘bollocks’ and suggested Sportech go play Spot The Loser.

William Hill has teamed with Racing Post on an iPhone horse racing app. Essentially, the app allows users to scroll through the Racing Post’s info, segue seamlessly into a Will Hill betting screen to place a wager, then follow the results of the race with the Live Reporter function. Racing Post’s Mark Renshaw claims the free app has been downloaded 200k times.

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William Hill and the Racing Post seem to think they’ve struck something with their latest mobile related news.

The Racing Post’s app is already the most popular horse racing one in the App store, and it now features betting in-app thanks to ye olde English bookmaker William Hill. The app will allow browsing of the Racing Post’s news and race card information, where you can bet directly using William Hill. Then all you have to do is sit back, relax, and watch the race unfold via the Live Reporter function.

Mark Renshaw, Head of Online for Racing Post commented: “When we surveyed our iPhone app users earlier this year, betting through the app was requested and we soon undertook a process to find a suitable betting partner. Over the last few months, we’ve worked hard with William Hill to develop, test and refine the process and it has impressed everyone who’s seen it. It’s truly revolutionary.”

“We’re really excited to be working with the Racing Post on this project, and believe it will be a huge hit with punters and iPhone users,” added Jamie Hart from William Hill Online.

It certainly adds another option to the market place, and those enthusiastic about horse racing will be unquestionably happy with the release of this App.

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Then it may come as a surprise that the Post are planning to distribute their publication in the low country, sending across a PDF from London’s Canary Wharf at 2am, to be printed using a digital press and sent to Ladbrokes shops across the Flemish nation. It will be printed in French, and it’s hoped the trial will be successful enough so that a roll out will begin across the entire continent, hoping to finally end up in the East with the hot tennis stars.

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Racing Post 'Betting Window'

I love UK publications because discussing odds and betting are a way of life. They don’t try to hide the fact that their readership puts a couple quid down on the match or at the races. In this article I discuss with Howard Wright how I came up with the name Bodog, the strategy behind how I’ve licensed out the Bodog Brand and future (non gaming) Bodog Brand initiatives.

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Keith McDonnell is head of Bodog Europe and a huge football fan. Ever since his Bodog group did a sponsorship deal with Fulham Football Club he’s been trying to get me to a match. Once I finally went I asked myself “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”. The Fulham group treated me like royalty with a VIP tour of Craven Cottage, introductions and time spent with the players and management, a hearty British dinner and many cool, crisp pints. They even surprised me with a customized, signed Fulham jersey! I now try to get to a match ever time I’m in London. Craven Cottage is such a gem of a stadium right on the Thames with so much history, it’s a truely unique place to watch a match. I really enjoyed meeting Mohamed Al-Fayed as he’s a business man I’ve studied over the years and team manager Roy Hodgson has done a great job with the team.

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