THE AMERICAS
New Jersey lost its appeal of the injunction preventing its sports betting plans from proceeding; WSOP.com became Nevada’s second licensed online poker site while its parent company Caesars Entertainment temporarily solved its debt problem by borrowing more money (apparently having not read Vince Martin’s treatise on the tenuous value of casino company debt); American Gaming Association CEO Geoff Freeman said online poker/killer crocodile movie Runner, Runner was “not far from reality;” an Experian study found online gamblers have the patience of two-year-olds; a 19-year-old ‘super hacker’ who preyed on online gambling sites was arrested in Argentina; Bally Technologies added Cantor Gaming’s sports book and mobile games to its iGaming Platform; Las Vegas Sands’ boss Sheldon Adelson topped all gaming interests on Forbes’ US rich list; Jason Kirk examined the ‘books of poker future’ and Lee Davy declared the Heartland Poker Tour to be a training ground for future WSOP champeens.
EUROPE
Bwin.party CEO Norbert Teufelberger irritated a French judge by skipping his scheduled court appearance; the UK will require poker network platform and software providers to hold UK-issued licenses while KPMG declared the UK’s point-of-consumption tax plans to be misguided; Ladbrokes’ Spanish-facing Sportium brand got an online launch date while Las Vegas Sands might yet receive a smoking exemption for Madrid’s EuroVegas; Italy’s gambling regulator approved new types of sports wagers; Greek casinos set a course for their fifth straight year of revenue decline; Dusk Till Dawn owner Rob Yong threatened to quit the poker business if his Online Club Cash Games venture wasn’t a success; Optimal Payments’ Neteller division bounced back from its post-Black Friday swoon; the nominees for the British Poker Awards were announced; Tatjana Pasalic offered her female perspective on poker; BitPay’s Tony Gallipi talked up BitCoin’s ability to simplify the online payment process; Lee Davy examined the perilous nature of the live poker tournament guarantee; Rebecca Liggero covered the Sports Marketing 360 conference in London and studied which sports betting affiliate programs actually convert, while Mike O’Donnell wondered if Colossus Bets really was as innovative as it claimed.
ASIA
Global Gaming Asset Management denied it had failed to honor its contractual obligations to Solaire Manila while Solaire’s owners Bloomberry Resorts said they were prepared to do GGAM’s job themselves; hopeful casino operators offered hints as to their Japanese ambitions while authorities shut down a ‘tele-casino’ in Nagoya; Aussie operator Centrebet won its court case against a remorseful Norwegian whale; Hong Kong’s casino boats offered an alternative to Macau; female loansharks kidnapped a Macau gambler; the China Welfare Lottery threatened to overtake Lottomatica for global lottery supremacy; 16 casinos failed Macau’s second round of smoking tests and Singapore cracked the whip on a gang of match-fixers.
