Gaming Industry News Weekly Recap – Stories You Might Have Missed

weekly-news-recap-thumb-september-10

weekly-news-recap-september-10Let’s look back at the top online gambling stories of the past week and a few you might have missed with our weekly online gaming news recap.

We had a guest contributor, Paddy Power SEO specialist Ryan Murton gave us a thorough look at Google’s pagerank and he questions its importance in a company’s SEO strategy.

If you’re an industry professional and you want your voice heard, we’re looking for guest contributors. It’s a great way to raise your profile and share your knowledge with the online gambling industry.

The Entraction Poker Network has pulled out of five countries, Canada, Israel, Russia, Norway and Turkey. Jamie Hinks looks at the possible reason why Entraction is giving up on some highly lucrative markets.

Subject: Poker, who have shown themselves as a solid source for poker news suggested that the US Department of Justice could be targeting the Merge Poker Network. These reports are just rumours at this point but if there is any truth to the rumours, it could be more bad news for poker companies on the Merge Network such as Jen Larson’s Lock Poker.

Larson has been openly questioned this week about how much she really knew about the cheating scandal involving former Lock Poker Pro Jose “Girah” Macedo.

Are virtual currencies the future in the world of online payments? Social gaming giants Zynga and Facebook seem to think so.

Full Tilt Poker has had their hearing with the Gambling Control Commission of Alderney pushed back four days to September 19; just enough time for another lawsuit.

This time it’s Canadian poker players who are taking up a class action lawsuit against Full Tilt Poker. Canadians haven’t had access to their money since Alderney pulled FTP’s licence on June 29.

BetFred won the bidding to take over the Tote back in June but acquisition has come under some scrutiny. The UK Office of Fair Trading is looking in the Tote acquisition as they are concerned it could have a negative impact on the competitiveness of the gaming industry.

BetFair was in the news a couple times this week, first they were reassuring customers that their personal information wasn’t compromised following a hacking incident.

Then they were reassuring stockholders after the release of their fiscal first quarter results, which showed a 7% decline in their core revenue. One bright spot was a 78% increase in mobile gaming revenue.

The Asian gaming market is booming and after Caesars missed out on Macau, they’ve decided India will do until they can get a Macau license.

The economic downturn has affected much of the world’s economies but one area that’s been untouched are the various lotteries of the world.

Videos of the week
We have four fantastic videos this week. The first is an interview with poker legend and Epic Poker League Commissioner Annie Duke.

Next are the highlights of the British Poker Awards.

The Barcelona Affiliate Conference will be fresh in the minds of many of you but here are our highlights of day one and day two.