Queensland Lottery -- Queensland lottery operator Golden Casket is scheduled to begin selling lottery tickets on its website by October 2005. In order to verify that players are of legal age, Golden Casket and the Queensland Government will require players to register at news agencies across the state before they may set up accounts to pay for lottery games online. Gold Lotto, Oz Lotto and Powerball will be playable online, but electronic scratch cards and other instant games will not be available.
Google Wallet -- Search engine Google has confirmed that is developing its own online payment system. The company's CEO Eric Schmidt says the company's payment system will differ from PayPal's in that it will not be a "person-to-person stored-value payments sytem," but he declined to give any more specifics or reveal when the product might be released. The company is not likely to accept payments for online gambling services…. Payment processing firm Moneybookers, which has been operational for four years, is on pace to obtain its 1 millionth account holder sometime in July.
Party Oversubscribed -- PartyGaming and its investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein have revealed that European fund managers have already placed orders for more than double the amount of available equity in the company. News reports earlier this week indicated that the company could have problems persuading enough fund managers to accept the high-risk public offering, but PartyGaming has obviously overcome these obstacles. Spread betting firm Cantor Index has reported that shares in the gray market have risen from last week's value of below 109p to their current value of between 121p to 125p -- well within the range of PartyGaming's asking price of 111p to 127p. Conditional dealings are set to begin on Monday, June 27th and full trading will begin on Thursday, June 30th.
U.S. GATS Expansion? -- Public Citizen, a "national non-profit consumer advocacy organization founded in 1971 to represent consumer interests in Congress, the executive branch and the courts," reports that U.S. trade negotiators are in Geneva this week participating in discussions to extend its obligations under the World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). This is despite the fact that last month attorneys general from 29 states wrote to the U.S. Trade Representative to express their concern that the expansion of U.S. GATS obligations would threaten rights and regulations that have traditionally been reserved for state governments. The most perfect example of their fear comes directly from the recent U.S. defeat in its WTO dispute with Antigua. The WTO dispute panel found that the U.S. has indeed committed itself to the free trade of gambling services--not just remote gambling services, but all gambling services. The attorneys general fear this could mean that foreign gambling service providers could have a right to establish a commercial presence in the U.S.--even in states like Utah and Hawaii, where all gambling is illegal. Similarly, if the U.S. were to extend its GATS obligations to cover other service areas, then states could lose the ability to regulate those services as well… Spokespersons for Antigua and Barbuda's government have stated that within the year they will form a company to market their Internet gaming industry and tourism and financial services.
More Slots -- British bookmaker Stan James has doubled its soft gaming portfolio by adding four new games developed by software provider Electracade, whose SlotEngine allows the company to build any format of slot machine from any one skin and gives a client the ability to customize the slot machine by pay-tables, number of reels, multiplier reels, fonts, sounds banks, activated features (nudges, holds, reel pickers), and frequency of feature occurrence.
Poker Column -- James McManus, a novelist and writing teacher who is best known for parlaying a $4,000 seat into a $250,000 win at the World Series of Poker in 2000, will tomorrow begin writing a weekly poker column for the Saturday sports section of the New York Times.
Parlay Site -- Internet bingo software and solutions provider Parlay Entertainment has signed a license agreement with New Media Lottery Services, Inc--a company that provides system support, game content and expertise to lotteries-- to launch an online bingo game as an expansion of the Irish Rehab Lotteries' existing online lottery site. Irish Rehab Lotteries is a division of independent not-for-profit organization The Rehab Group, which works for social and economic inclusion among people with disabilities and other who are marginalized.
Deal Terminated -- After 18 months, European betting company BetandWin has terminated its agreement with white-label partner NOMATO Investments Ltd, operator of betoto.com and thecroupier.com. BetandWin has decided to drop its white-label business-to-business model for the time being so that it can concentrate on enhancing its sports betting technology, rather than making it available to third parties. A total purchase price of 18.94 million euros (equivalent to three times the anticipated gross revenue for 2005) will be given to NOMATO in exchange for all rights to the domains betoto.com and thecroupier.com, as well as all customers there.
Poker Upgrades -- CryptoLogic's subsidiary WagerLogic has released new enhancements to its poker software, including high-speed Lightning games, which only allow players 12 seconds to act. Also available are ten new game levels for players who prefer lower-stakes games, including 0.15/0.25 No Limit and Pot Limit games, and 0.25/0.50 and 0.50/1.00 Limit games.
Quickies -- Swedish gambling operator Svenska Spel has expanded its mobile services by adding mobile bingo games.