Gaming Industry News Weekly Recap – Stories You Might Have Missed

new-weekly-recap-january-11-282THE AMERICAS
PartyPoker struck a landmark sponsorship deal with two US-based pro sports franchises but Bwin.party stock fell anyway; Cantor Gaming rebranded after being spanked by Nevada gaming regulators over Mike Colbert’s antics; Sheldon Adelson’s anti-online gambling vendetta manifested itself in the form of draft legislation to ‘fix’ the Wire Act but some other rich old dudes are banking big on online gambling; Nevada casinos lost money for the fifth year running; Americas Cardroom began accepting deposits in Bitcoin; Genting teamed with Gulfstream Park on a slots-only Miami gaming project; Colorado authorities took down an online gambling operation; revenues from Manitoba’s online gambling site failed to match government expectations; Fabian Quoss won the Super High Roller at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, while Lee Davy convinced Daniel Negreanu to talk at length about his life away from the game.

EUROPE
The mere mention of fixed-odds betting terminals in the House of Commons sent high street bookies’ share prices into a shame spiral; Betfred employees braced for massive salary cuts; police investigated why HappyBet director Oliver Frohlich was shot dead in Frankfurt; Full Tilt Poker debuted its new casino game options; Swedish gambling monopoly Svenska Spel got in a flame war with local media; two Russian gamblers cut off their own ears to settle an arm-wrestling wager; CasinoAffliatePrograms’ Michaela McNamara discussed the ins and outs of push messaging while Rebecca Liggero offered her list of the year’s ‘must attend’ conferences along with her invaluable perspective on getting the most out of London conference week, including finding the best parties afterward so you can forget everything you’ve just learned.

ASIA
SunCity Group sold control of its Macau junket business to IEC for nearly a billion dollars; South Korea agreed to lower the financial bar for casino developers; Macau operators got spooked by a legislator’s plan to cap the number of electronic table games; Bally Technologies stated it would “vigorously defend” the Asian interests of its SHFL subsidiary; Malaysia isn’t getting a second resort casino but it is getting an anti-online gambling taskforce; Reed Exhibitions’ Mike Johnson talked up this year’s G2E Asia get-together; police still don’t know why a Chinese high roller brought a machine gun and grenades to a Manila casino but they do know that Robert Gustafsson was behind last year’s raid on Bodog Asia’s Manila offices.