THE AMERICAS
Amaya Gaming CEO David Baazov announced a C$2.8b bid to take the company private while offering assurances that the Scheinbergs won’t be involved; Citigroup became the latest financial institution to cut off daily fantasy sports in New York while DFS operators exited Hawaii after receiving cease and desist orders; a New York online poker bill received its first committee approval; regulators said Bwin.party could continue to operate in New Jersey while GVC Holdings’ application was pending; iiTeam Network bailed out defunct DFS operator FantasyUp; Pete Rose starred in a new William Hill US sports betting TV commercial; Delaware sought to take its sports lottery online; Ruby Seven Studios inked a social casino deal with California’s Pechanga casino; Florida’s Seminole tribe touted a $1.8b expansion plan if the state approves its new gaming compact; wanking site Pornhub launched a live dealer casino; Annette Obrestad signed on to promote Las Vegas Sands’ Venetian poker room; 888 Holdings’ Chris Capra explained why the US online gambling market was promising but not for the faint of heart and this week’s episode of Chats with Tats exposed the booboos and outtakes that didn’t make the final cut.
EUROPE
DraftKings launched a half-finished UK-faciang DFS site and signed a trio of Premier League partnerships; PartyPoker re-entered 21 grey markets it exited long before the GVC takeover; Betsson revenue rose nearly one-quarter in 2015; SBTech picked a Deutsche Bank analyst as its new CEO; data showed some UK online sports betting sites are handling the POCT better than others; the newly merged Paddy Power Betfair began trading on the LSE; the European Union’s top court said Germany couldn’t penalize online betting operators; Bet365 dominated Italy’s online sports betting market; the UK’s financial watchdog publicly shamed spread betting firms; CustomEsports’ Adam Stevens explained the opportunities eSports holds for traditional sportsbooks; Mediarex Sports & Entertainment wooed disenchanted online poker players with the launch of HoldemX and the CalvinAyre.com crew brought video highlights of Days One, Two and Three of ICE Totally Gaming 2016 as well as Days One and Two of the London Affiliate Conference.
ASIA
Macau casino revenue fell for the 20th straight month but calendar quirks could break the streak in February; the Cali Group junket closed two Macau VIP rooms and the first junket-run VIP slots room got off to a slow start; a police raid uncovered more illegal UnionPay terminals in Macau; Tabcorp profit fell one-third in 2015 while NagaCorp’s revenue rose over one-quarter; PAGCOR said it was willing to issue more casinos licenses outside Manila; South Korea probed an eSports champ for alleged match fixing; Alter City Group’s $1.2b Tinian casino plan got the regulatory thumbs up; Start Live Casino expanded its live dealer online casino operations and a Chinese pilots association told its members to cut out the gambling, boozing and whoring.
