Cantor Gaming, the offshoot of Wall Street financial titan Cantor Fitzgerald that operates sportsbooks and provides mobile gaming options for Nevada casinos, has made a deal to enter the California casino market. The Colusa Casino Resort in northern California, owned and operated by the Cachi Dehe Band of Wintun Indians, has tapped Cantor to provide casino customers with mobile gaming options via Cantor’s proprietary eDeck mobile technology. Casino visitors will enjoy Cantor’s Xtra Odds Blackjack and Baccarat games, as well as new games Cantor is promising to release over the next three months.
Gaming device maker and Nevada online poker hopeful WMS Industries has acquired Genesis Communications, doing business as Phantom EFX, a developer of social and mobile casino games. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. The two companies have done business together for the past year, and WMS apparently enjoyed the experience enough to bring the company in-house. Phantom EFX will continue to operate from its Cedar Falls, Iowa location, and CEO Aaron Schurman told wcfCourier.com that “if everything goes right,” he expects his current roster of 35 employees will “double in size in 18 months.” Last month, WMS acquired Swedish online game developer Jadestone Group and inked a partnership in April with Groupe Partouche on a WMS-hosted Belgian online casino.
Malta-licensed online gambling operator Bet-at-home has re-upped its sponsorship deal with German football squad FC Schalke 04. The Betclic Everest subsidiary will become a premium partner of the club until June 2014, entitling it to advertising space at the Veltins Arena, the Bundesliga squad’s training camps and on the club’s website. Sponsors.de claims the deal is worth €1m. Bet-at-home originally signed a two-year deal with the club in July 2011.
Bet-at-home’s football marketing has earned the attention of the Austrian Ad Council. The Council received 71 complaints over the past two weeks over Bet-at-home billboards and commercials featuring players in German football kit suffering muscle cramps and stumbling to the ground clutching various limbs, followed by a shot of an Austrian fan sticking a voodoo doll with pins. The Council ultimately determined the ads to be insensitive, but declined to call them racist. Bet-at-home marketing director Michael Gierke said the company’s advertising efforts would continue to push the envelope, even though he acknowledged it meant that “we will always be a topic of conversation at the Ad Council.”
