THE AMERICAS
California’s online poker bill got unanimous approval from an Assembly committee but the ‘bad actor’ impasse remains unresolved; DraftKings and FanDuel agreed to halt real-money daily fantasy sports activity in Alabama; US regulatory inertia was blamed for GAN’s £3m loss in 2015; Boyd Gaming made its second major Las Vegas acquisition in a week; Massachusetts regulators rejected Rush Street Gaming’s proposal for a Brockton casino; a federal court in Kentucky tossed a trademark lawsuit against a historical racing operator; March Madness helped Nevada sportsbooks set another betting handle record and Lee Davy examined the effectiveness of the latest World Series of Poker improvements.
EUROPE
CVC Capital Partners acquired a majority stake in German betting operator Tipico; GVC Holdings said it was schooling Bwin.party execs on the need to actually earn bonuses; Bet365’s founding family made the top-25 on the Sunday Times Rich List; Unibet set another revenue record in Q1 and formed its own poker network; NYX Gaming Group doubled revenue but still lost money in 2015; Italy’s online market rose more than one-fifth in Q1; Gala Coral Group was penalized £880k for shoddy AML and KYC procedures; Paddy Power Betfair mulled merging their media spend into a single agency; a medical official blamed betting shops for Britain’s obesity epidemic; Cozy Games’ Sreeram Vanga explained why affiliates need to embrace gamification and Media Skunk Works’ Paul Reilly said affiliates needed to realize that Google is not stupid; former footballer and Colossus Bets ambassador Michael Owen offered his picks for Euro 2016; eSports skin betting was said to be a $5b market and Becky Liggero offered her top-five takeaways from the eSports Conference Europe’s betting panels.
ASIA
Australia revealed its plans to combat unauthorized international online operators; Galaxy Entertainment Group posted its first quarterly profit rise since 2014; Bloomberry’s Enrique Razon unveiled plans for a second Manila casino but Belle Corp’s Willy Ocier urged the Philippine government to block the plan; Macau junket operators were said to be sitting on $8b in bad VIP gambling debts; Jimei International inked a junket deal with Australia’s The Star Entertainment; CrownBet pled guilty to offering illegal inducements in New South Wales; Malaysia started cutting power to illegal online gambling centers; analysts said India’s casino market was vastly underserved; Singapore renewed Marina Bay Sands license and Rafi Farber insisted that Las Vegas Sands was doing better in Macau than investors realized.
