THE AMERICAS
Texas became the latest state to call daily fantasy sports illegal gambling and Illinois’ AG sought the dismissal of DFS operator legal complaints; DraftKings banned third-party scripting tools while FanDuel began laying off staff to cut expenses; Phil Ivey launched his own DFS site while poker pro Aaron Jones won the biggest prize in DFS history; a poll found Americans don’t find sports betting immoral; Amaya Gaming said it expected to meet its 2015 earnings targets and got a break from a nuisance lawsuit in Illinois, while Daniel Negreanu dished on the meeting between PokerStars and its aggrieved high-volume players; investigators reportedly found a degree of civil fraud in Caesars pre-bankruptcy transactions; Glenn Straub decided he wants to reopen Revel with a half-sized casino; another California casino pled guilty to money laundering charges; Rafi Farber suggested it was time to invest in US casino stocks and Jaime Staples joined Tatjana Pasalic in this week’s episode of Chats with Tats.
EUROPE
The Irish Lottery was hit by a DDoS attack; LeoVegas branched out into sports betting with help from Kambi Sports Solutions; sports betting was the only bright spot in France’s online gambling market in 2015 but French land-based casinos returned to growth after seven years; PokerStars froze a number of accounts on suspicion of bot use; Sky Sports announced plans to air an eSports betting documentary; Synot Tip cancelled its sports sponsorships to protest Czech Republic gambling tax hikes; Malta Gaming Authority chairman Joseph Cuschieri recapped the MGA’s year of change while cabinet member Jose Herrera explained why a Malta license is best for South American operators; Matching Visions CEO Dennis Dyhr-Hansen calculated the winning formula for online affiliates; iGaming Capital’s Melissa Blau explained what it took to make the Start-Up Launchpad and Rebecca Liggero invited innovators to pitch their ideas at the GamCrowd’s Pitch ICE competition at ICE Totally Gaming.
ASIA
Allegations of match-fixing dominated talk at the Australian Open but William Hill Australia’s betting turnover surged and the company demanded a retraction of a newspaper’s claims of Hills’ in-play illegality; VIP gaming fell to a record low share of Macau’s gaming market in 2015; China’s lottery sales fell nearly 4% in 2015; Berjaya Corp bagged an 18-year lottery contract in Vietnam; Taiwan’s new government spelled trouble for casino legislation; Australian punters weren’t deterred by a greyhound live-baiting scandal; Frontier Capital announced plans to use proxy betting to boost VIP action at its new Philippines casino; Vietnam deported some South Korean online gambling operators and an Australian court confiscated $600k from a Star casino safety deposit box after a brothel owner denied knowing the depositor.
