Polish Merger -- Poland's Treasury has decided to merge the state's two gambling companies, Totalizator Sportowy and Polski Monopol, which together have a monopoly on the country's lotteries and games of chance. The treasury has also dismissed Polski Monopol's president, Ryszard Naleszkiewicz, and vice-president, Waclaw Zygmunt, because they opposed the merger. Before the merger announcement was made, Polski Monopol entered a contract with Greek company Intralot to service the sales of its product, and Totalizator Sportowy entered a similar contract with American company GTECH, which could create a complicated situation. The Poland A.M. speculates that Intralot might demand compensation of about 60 million euro if its contract is broken. Polski Monopol had experienced financial trouble within the last few months and downsized its operations as a result.
Restructuring -- U.K.-based I-gaming software provider World Gaming PLC has completed a restructuring project that closed two of its non-core business segments: its transaction processing division and the customer service division that supported those services. The company decided to restructure because most of its licensees already handle transaction processing themselves and the transaction volume of the licensees who did require World Gaming to perform those functions constituted less than 6 percent of the company's transaction volume. The company expects to save more than $600,000 per year as a result of the restructuring… AngelCiti Entertainment says that its subsidiary, Worldwide Management, is going to spin its online poker operations into a separate unit from its other I-gaming operations so that the new poker division may "fully exploit the meteoric growth of the online poker industry."
Sky Vegas Live -- The Racing Post reports that BSkyB plans to operate a new interactive channel called Sky Vegas Live that will at first offer Keno games and soon thereafter feature virtual horse racing. BSkyB is calling Sky Vegas Live an entertainment channel and says more fixed-odds games will be offered as the channel gets rolling.
Online Poker Tournament -- The Las Vegas Advisor will be hosting a free online tournament of no-limit Hold 'Em on Sunday with a $100 prize pool. The tournament is being held in conjunction with Ultimate Bet, so players must first download Ultimate Bet's poker software before playing. The Las Vegas Advisor says the tournament is the first of several planned events that is experimenting with.
BoDog's Casino -- Online betting company BoDog.com is incorporating Real Time Gaming's casino software into its gaming site. BoDog says the decision to expand its casino offering came as a result of players wanting to play more casino games with their sports book account. This marks the first time BoDog has implemented another company's product for a player-facing service. Real Time's software will give BoDog's customers 60 casino games.
Quoteworthy -- "It is a matter of record that on a couple of occasions we have said to the department that we in fact would not oppose a change to 18. The NLC (National Lottery Commission) could not quite quantify that for you but in fact the work we have done would indicate it would be a loss of about £20 million a year on scratch cards."
-- Camelot chief executive Dianne Thompson, explaining to the Gambling Bill's parliamentary scrutiny committee that Camelot would not object to raising the legal age to purchase lottery tickets from 16 years to 18 years. It seems that the legal age will remain 16 as long as the lottery is under the governance of the National Lottery Commission. It is possible that the lottery could be governed by the proposed Gambling Commission once the new Gambling Bill is implemented, but raising the legal age would result in less revenue going toward charity.