Theft at Betfair -- Betfair is putting £198,077 back into its pension fund after one of the company's former directors, Andrew Petrie, stole £1,584,757.71 from the fund over a span of 21 months. Petrie, who used some of the stolen money to gamble, confessed to three charges of theft and was sentenced to six-and-a-half years of prison. The £198,077 that Betfair is returning to the pension fund covers the profits that Betfair made from Petrie's betting with the company.
Estonian News -- Spordiennustus A/S, an Estonian licensed gaming operator that is a joint venture between the Estonian Olympic Committee and Pafer A/S, is receiving an online gaming platform from European Game & Entertainment Technology Ltd. (EGET). The EGET WinOne Gaming System will launch with help from Ålands Penningautomatförening (PAF) during Spring 2004 and will at first take bets on local and international sporting bets, but will later be modified to take bets on almost any event. Spordiennustus hopes its I-gaming system will be an important source of funding for Estonian sports.
BSkyB Loses Rights -- E.U. Competition Minister Mario Monti announced that a deal between the English Premier League and the European Commission will force British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) to forfeit the rights to eight live, top-flight English soccer matches each year to a terrestrial rival. According to Monti, "The Premier League has committed to significant changes to its media rights policy for its 2004-5 season. We have also received commitments from BSkyB regarding its existing wholesale offer of channels, a new wholesale offer of pay-per-view matches to other pay TV companies, and, most important, some licensing arrangements for up to eight high-quality matches per season." BSkyB retains the rights to 38 games a year.
Spam-index -- Clearswift, the secure e-communications solutions company that analyzes thousands of spam messages each month to produce a Spam-index that "gives a snapshot picture of the nature of spam e-mails on a monthly basis," has released its findings for November. According to Clearswift, about 50 percent of all spam in November was healthcare related, most of it selling Viagra or similar products. Healthcare-related spam represented only 27 percent of all spam in October. Alyn Hockey, research director at Clearswift said, "The kind of spam that is being sent seems to change each month. The kind of spam that is being sent seems to change each month. Each category appears to be going up and down like a yo-yo, although the level of pornographic spam seems to be going down on the whole. This latest analysis suggests spammers are attempting to capitalize on people's concerns for looking and performing at their best for the Christmas party season."
Casino Reality TV -- The Fox network plans to give viewers Casino: an hour-long reality show portraying the grand opening of Las Vegas' Golden Nugget and the day-to-day lives of Thomas Breitling and Timothy Poster, the two entrepreneurs who purchased the casino. The show's developers also plan to document the activities of the Golden Nugget's pit bosses, cocktail waitresses, entertainers, security guards, and patrons from around the world. Fox has ordered 13 episodes of Casino, which will be co-produced by Mark Burnett, creator of Survivor and The Restaurant.