THE AMERICAS
Harry Reid can’t find GOP supporters for his online poker bill, but opponents are legion; Full Tilt Poker’s Rafe Furst settled his civil charges with the Department of Justice; the Merge Gaming Network lost a poker skin (and possibly more); Intrade was forced to close to US customers; the Mohegan Sun casino picked the Ongame Network for a free-play online poker offering; two winners split the largest Powerball jackpot in history; Vince Martin wondered if US casino operators would follow Penn National Gaming’s move to spln off its real estate assets; Bitcoin passed a significant milestone; New Jersey residents split on the issue of sports betting and Bill Beatty discussed the Garden State’s sports betting lawsuit with iMEGA’s Joe Brennan Jr.
EUROPE
The continent wasn’t very kind to Sportingbet’s quarterly report; industry associations cried foul about Greece (again), while Betfair fled the country and appointed a new CFO; Playtech began playing the price is right with its William Hill Online stake; Facebook decided it wanted to host a Zynga real-money gambling product while PokerStars confirmed its readying a social poker offering; Finns are positively mad about slots; Russia’s Supreme Court got tough with ISPs over online gambling; Vivo Interactive’s CEO talked live dealer social casino games and eGR held its annual friends, family and advertiser Oscars.
ASIA
Universal Entertainment execs told a Philippine House of Representatives committee there was nothing to those rampant bribery allegations but a second committee is now investigating the matter; a larger than life figure from Macau’s bad old days was released from prison; Macau approved mobile gambling inside its casinos; Taiwan delayed its casino legislation; Tatts Group paid $427m for the SA Lottery contract much to Intralot’s chagrin; Vietnam shut down a huge illegal casino; Bodog Asia hired a digital marketing man; the Asian Poker Tour prepared to close out their season in style and Angelia Ong was hospitable at the Asian Gaming and Hospitality Congress and a social butterfly at the Social Gaming Asia Summit.
