Nevada Stats -- The Nevada Gaming Control Board announced that Sunday's Super Bowl brought in a record sum of $81.2 million in bets in the state, with casinos keeping $12.4 million, or 15.3 percent, worth of the wagers. The total amount wagered is 13 percent higher than last year's $71.7 million. The previous record was set in 1998, when the casinos made only $472,033 in profits on the game.
Spam Solution -- The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Monday at a two-day seminar in Brussels that it hosted in conjunction with the European Commission that only coordinated action by the governments across the globe can slow the gradual increase in spam. Some statistics from the OECD's 57-page report demonstrating the problems that spam is exerting on the Web: The worldwide cost of spam to Internet users is about $12.5 billion per year; 65 percent of Internet users spend more than 10 minutes per day killing spam and 24 percent spend more than 20 minutes per day; spam adds 10 percent to the cost of ISPs; 90 percent of viruses are sent via e-mail; and AOL blocked 2.37 billion spam messages each day in April 2003.
Betfair in Asia -- Tim Levene, Betfair's commercial director, is leaving his post to become managing director of the company's Asian operations. Levene will spend the next year and a half in Southeast Asia lobbying governments and betting monopolies to create regulation for betting exchanges.