Gaming Industry News Weekly Recap – Stories You Might Have Missed

weekly-news-recap-january-28LONDON INDUSTRY GET-TOGETHER
There was just too much damn coverage of the conference, expo and awards nuttiness in London this week to list it all separately, so just click here for links to all our print, video and photographic coverage of ICE, LAC and awards galore.

AMERICAS
Sen. Jon Kyl broke his silence regarding his cooperation with Sen. Harry Reid on potential online poker legislation just as the Senate scheduled a new hearing on online gambling; two New Jersey congressmen introduced legislation to poke holes in the federal prohibitions against sports betting; Hawaii proposed online gambling legislation (again); District of Columbia officials threatened each other with lawsuits over DC’s online gambling plans; International Game Technology and WMS Industries published financial results; we got a peak into Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson’s banking habits; Zynga beta-launched its Bingo game and Vegas is winning the battle for Asian baccarat whales.

EUROPE & AFRICA
Playtech had a busy week, publishing Q4 results, restructuring its partnership with Scientific Games, acquiring Geneity and inking two joint ventures; 32Red’s trademark infringement suit against William Hill was upheld by the Court of Appeal; Fortuna launched the first Polish online betting site; Bwin.party defended its relationship with Megaupload.com and decided to apply for a Belgian gaming license after all; a Tory MP introduced a private members bill to bring online gambling companies back onto UK soil; KAX Media re-launched Gambling.com in the UK; Media Corp inked an online joint venture with London’s Hippodrome Casino and South Africa released its annual Survey of Casino Entertainment.

ASIA
A Philippines court declared the country had no laws specifically prohibiting online gambling; Pagcor considered adding cockfight broadcasts to their casinos; Universal Entertainment broke ground on its Manila Bay Resorts project; Macau is on track for another record month, maybe because there are more junket operators than ever; a Taiwanese whale lost his bid to cancel his Macau marker and the Asian Poker Tour added Joe Hachem as an ambassador.