The Candidates on I-gaming -- Candidates in the race for the U.S. presidency are in Las Vegas this week trying to drum up votes from their respective caucuses. The Las Vegas Sun on Thursday laid out the positions of the top three Democratic candidates. Sen. Hillary Clinton supports the idea a studying Internet gambling to see whether it can be fairly regulated, while Sen. John Edwards opposes legalization because he doubts whether it can be controlled. Meanwhile, Sen. Barack Obama, like Clinton, supports a study, and supports regulation because he worries that the Internet is a "Wild West of illegal activity," according to the Sun.
Fluxx in the Clear -- Shareholders of German horse betting company Sportwetten.de AG have accepted a voluntary 1.09 euro per share takeover offer from rival Fluxx AG. Fluxx won the takeover bid on Wednesday. Fluxx now holds a 59.6 percent stake in Sportwetten, but has not ruled out the possibility of increasing its shareholding in the future.
ISWI on the Rise -- Interactive Systems Worldwide, Inc. on Wednesday reported its audited financial results for the year ended Sept. 30, 2007. Revenues for the year were $500,000, compared to only $111,000 in 2006, an increase of 350 percent. Net loss improved to $2.4 million as compared with $4.7 million in 2006.
A New Low -- Lottery services supplier Scientific Games Corp. reached its lowest share price in more than three years on Wednesday following the loss of its third online contract within a month. Scientific Games on Tuesday lost a Pennsylvania online lottery bid to Gtech. It has previously lost two contract bids for the South Carolina and West Virginia lotteries, which had a combined value of about $60 million a year, according to the company. Scientific Games stock fell 31.6 percent on the NASDAQ to $19.27 upon the news. It fell even further today, landing at $17.80 as of 3:30 pm (EST).
Expensive Decision -- William Hill's cancellation of its proprietary online betting software, NextGen, has brought an exceptional non-cash impairment charge of just over $43 million and restructuring costs of almost $8 million dollars upon the company. The company announced it was ditching its in-house development program in favor of an outsourced solution. "A couple of years back, we believed we could get an advantage over our competitors by developing our own system but, in truth, we are not software developers," said Charles Scott, executive chairman for William Hill.
Stock Watch -- On the LSE, William Hill was down 16.25p to 370.25, Sportech was down 2.50p to 91.00 and London Capital Group was down 16.50 to 332.00.