New Rules -- German bookmaker Oddset has announced that it will no longer accept bets from players, trainers, referees, coaches, or anyone else who might be able to influence the result of football matches. The decision comes weeks after German referee Robert Hoyzer admitted to accepting bribes to fix matches. Hoyzer has also begun implicating other players and referees, indicating that the scandal could run quite deep. Oddset, which lost around one million euros on two of the matches Hoyzer fixed, reportedly warned the Deutschen Fussball-Bundes (German Football Federation-DFB) on August 23rd about unusually heavy betting from Berlin on two matches that were officiated by Hoyzer. Both the DFB and the Bundesliga (German Football League-DFL) are now including prohibitions on betting in their rules and regulations. The DFB and DFL also announced this week that they have enlisted the help of betting security company Betradar to assist in monitoring wagering on German football.
Quoteworthy -- "The main problem with what's out there at the moment is that it's very samey, not made for the UK market and there's not enough live programming. We think we can do as well, if not better than the World Poker Tour. Live is the next big thing to happen in poker."
--Crispin Nieboer, CEO of The Poker Channel, which went live on the Sky digital satellite network on March 23. Nieboer, a former commercial manager for Sky Ventures, has joined forces with Sky producer James Hopkins and former head of Sky Music Chiara Cipriani to launch the new channel, which will originally air between 14.00 and 01.00, but eventually reach a full 24-hour broadcast by May. The channel plans to rely on its own original programming rather than competing for right to World Poker Tour or Celebrity Poker Club tournaments.
GIGSE -- River City Group has announced that the exposition floor for the seventh annual Global Interactive Gaming Summit and Expo (GIGSE) on June 13-15 in Montreal has already sold out and is being expanded to accommodate the growing demand for access to the 1,000-1,200 interactive gambling executives from 45 countries who will attend the event. The company says early bird registration rates are still available via the event's secure online registration page, www.gigse.com.
Monopoly -- The Victorian government has announced that it is seeking a new competitive application process through which it could allow up to three lottery licenses after July 2007, thus ending Tattersall's 50-year lottery monopoly. The government will call for registrations of interest in lottery licenses before preparing a short list of serious bidders later this year and will also remove barriers that prevent Tabcorp and Crown from bidding on one of the licenses. It is also rumored that Racing Victoria and Cricket Australia could be interested in forming a consortium to bid for a license.