Gaming Industry News Weekly Recap – Stories You Might Have Missed

weekly-news-recap-february-25Behold, the week that was:

THE AMERICAS
Casino outfits Boyd Gaming and MGM Resorts published earnings reports; California and Mississippi dropped new online poker bills, while Iowa’s poker bill passed another Senate committee test; Bally Technologies acquired ChiliGaming’s B2B igaming platform; Everleaf Gaming Network insisted it will repay its US players after a processor shutdown; Atlantis Internet Group moved forward with its intranet poker Tribal Gaming Network; peripheral Black Friday figure Jeremy Johnson was accused of making online poker millions disappear; the fight to bring casinos to Massachusetts saw lobbying expenditures triple in five years; exchange wagering remains a tough sell at US racetracks; the American Gaming Association’s Frank Fahrenkopf talked federal poker regulation; poker icons Daniel Negreanu and Doyle Brunson agreed to disagree on the culpability of Full Tilt Poker board members in FTP’s demise; Steve Wynn won the latest round in his legal fight with softcore porn king Joe Francis and Rebecca Liggero paid a visit to the GES Latin American gaming industry confab.

EUROPE
William Hill’s earnings report displayed an increasing reliance on its online product, all the more reason to eliminate Playtech’s strategic veto in the joint venture; Schleswig-Holstein’s much-favored online gambling legislation survived an attempted repeal in Germany; PokerStars debuted its real-money dot-com mobile app in the UK, then released the public beta of Zoom Poker, Stars’ answer to FTP’s Rush Poker; iPoker’s proposed split into two networks raised a few eyebrows; PKR launched its Italian site; Gibraltar’s regulators ordered Betfred to pay a £4m marker; the European Commission will host a gaming regulator summit on Monday; the UK Gambling Commission released match-fixing figures; Paddy Power’s advert featuring transgendered ladies making the rounds at Cheltenham came under fire, eventually prompting the Irish jokesters to pull the ad and for Paddy Power himself to talk marketing with Rebecca Liggero.

ASIA
Wynn Resorts’ attacks on Universal Entertainment’s Kazuo Okada continued unabated, culminating in the removal of Okada from Wynn Macau’s board and the Philippines government launching a probe into Pagcor CEO Cristino Naguiat’s dealings with Okada; Melco Crown expressed interest in Pagcor’s Entertainment City Manila project; Genting Singapore and Tatts Group reported profits; Crown Ltd. boosted its stake in rival Echo Entertainment; MGM plans to build a non-casino hotel on the Chinese mainland and Singapore’s casinos have had little effect on the gambling habits of local residents.