Betdaq -- Rob Hartnett, managing director for Irish betting exchange Betdaq, told New Media Age that his company has nearly finalized an agreement with the British Jockey Club whereby Betdaq would share certain betting information with the club in cases of suspicious betting. "We're in the final stages of discussions. It's a different version which is better for all parties," he said. "We'd only be comfortable if there was a balance between catching the guilty and protecting the innocent." While two other betting exchanges, Betfair and Sporting Odds, signed Memorandums of Understanding with the Jockey Club in June, Betdaq refused to do so because of customer privacy concerns.
Blackout -- ThoroughVision, the group that holds the telecast rights to racing by the Sydney Turf Club and the Australian Jockey Club, will hold meetings this week to appoint an alternative telecaster for racing in Sydney. Tab Ltd.'s Sky Channel on Saturday began blocking out racing in Sydney because it was unable to reach an agreement with ThoroughVision.
P2P Launch Delayed -- U.K.-based betting company Sportingbet had been preparing to launch a betting exchange, but has decided to delay its launch now that the British government is reviewing betting exchanges to determine what level of tax players should pay. Sportingbet CEO Mark Blandford said, "We have trialed an exchange, and in light of the budget statement we have put that on hold. I would be very disappointed if this dragged on into next year because we want clarity in terms of competition."
New Games -- Cyprus-based software developer Playtech has added seven new games to its 65-game casino suite. The new games include two original eight-line slots, a variation of video poker, a new fixed-odds game and revamped versions of three of Playtech's progressives. Playtech says the introduction of the new games, which were developed in response to player requests, is part of the company's long-term strategy of providing a continuously renewed stock of games.
DDoS Monitoring -- BBC and Netcraft, a server monitoring company, have examined the status of 20 of England's top betting Web sites since March 1. From that time until now, those top 20 sites have experienced 33 different service outages (some due to DDOS attacks) that have taken 15 of them offline for some period of time. Check the following link for updated graphical data on the Web sites' online status: http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/gambling?orderby=outage_time&reverse=1.
Confiscated -- The Shanghai Morning Post reports that Beijing Customs, while conducting regular inspections of postal deliveries, seized 618 online gambling discs that were shipped from Switzerland. The discs would have permitted users to gamble with online casinos hosted overseas. Online gambling is illegal in China.
P2P Financial Exchange -- Person-to-person betting exchange systems developer, TradingSports Exchange Systems and City Index, a financial spread betting company, are launching www.binexx.com, the first binary financial betting exchange. City Index's owner, Intercapital, promises tight user-controlled spreads and low commissions.
Wireless Hill -- William Hill has licensed wireless marketing company Enpocket's Engine application, which provides odds and gambling information for all racing, football, tennis, golf and rugby to mobile subscribers.