Friday, Dec. 20
New Stuff -- The operator of Web sites including lottery.com and skillmoney.com is changing its name from Colley Corp. to Games. Inc. The Cincinnati-based group's lottery site provides lottery information and results to sites including MSN, Yahoo! and AOLDigital Cities. According to Games Inc., it has "developed the infrastructure that will allow it to sell lottery tickets over the Internet in cooperation with state lotteries across the country."
Names and Faces -- Toronto-based dot com Entertainment Group Inc. has named Anthony De Werth to its board of directors. De Werth is the former chairman and CEO of CIBC Wood Gundy Private Client Investments Inc., a position from which he retired in 1995.
Thursday, Dec. 19
Names and Faces -- WorldWinner, an online gaming company based in Newton, Mass., has chosen Stephen Killeen as its new
chief executive. Killeen, a former executive at Fidelity Investments and Terra Lycos, calls the WorldWinner business model a "really interesting business proposition." WorldWinner's service enables people to play games like blackjack or chess with each other online for a per-game entry fee. The games are skill-based, Killeen said. Last year the company raised $17 million in venture capital from Boston-area companies including Zero Stage Capital, CommonAngels and HarbourVest Partners.
New Stuff -- Freeserve, the United
Kingdom's largest ISP, launched online bingo using Victor Chandler software. The non-download game accompanies casino games and multiplayer poker on the Freeserve site. It includes a variety of different types of bingo, including Big Ben, 90 balls and progressive jackpot bingo. John Gisby, the managing director of portals for Freeserve, said bingo was the next logical step after launching casino games. "The popularity of our casino service reveals how much people love a flutter on the Internet," he said. "I suspect the sheer democratic nature of bingo could make it even more popular." ...
Boss Media today launched its online poker software, which was created with help from Andy "the Poker Pundit" Glazer, a poker expert. “For millions of poker players, online poker will become what the stock exchange is to day-traders playing the financial markets," Glazer said.
Wednesday, Dec. 18
Tidbit from Japan -- The Japanese Racing Association warned recently that it is losing betting business due to competition from online gambling sites. According to a report on Asahi.com, an official with the JRA has expressed surprise at the number of Internet gambling sites that court Japanese bettors. The JRA is the world's wealthiest racing organization, taking in about 3.2 trillion yen per year in sales; it estimates that it loses about 14 billion yen annually to online betting. "We bear the huge cost of raising horses, offering prize money and maintaining racecourses," the official said. "We even pay the state 10 percent of our revenue. The Net bookmakers are raking in all they can without bearing any of the cost." The organization said it wants to "tackle the freeloaders by all means possible."
Legal Stuff -- EasyGroup, the company that brought the world easyJet, a budget-friendly airline, is suing an Edinburgh-based bookmaker because of the name he has chosen for his new online casino. Henry Spurway, who has sold his Larkspur chain of betting shops, is planning to launch an online betting site called easibet.net. EasyGroup lawyers, however, are saying the name is confusingly similar to EasyGroup's subsidiaries, which include Internet cafes, the airline and a credit card company, all of which have the word "easy" in their names. Spurway said he is prepared to go to court to keep the name... but it won't be easy.
Changing Names -- SINA.com said it's changing its name to SINA Corp. The Beijing and San Mateo, Calif.-based company said the new name reflects its transformation from an Internet portal to a full-fledged corporation with three businesses, SINA.com, SINA.net and SINA Online. The suite of sites offers services including e-mail, wireless short messaging and online games.
Tuesday, Dec. 17
Bit from Canada -- Poker.com, which has been changes in both management and domain names lately, will not be going private. The publicly traded company had recently said it would pursue privatization. Friday, the Vancouver-based gaming software provider announced that its interim president and CEO, Michael Jackson, would be replaced permanently by Mark Glusing. The company said it will remain public because of the status of I-gaming legislation in the United States. Incidentally, when announcing its motion toward privacy, the company also cited the U.S. legislative efforts against online gambling.
News from Down Under -- Australian inventor Alan McCabe has developed a computer program that he says can predict the outcome of sporting events. McCabe said the Artificially Intelligent Tipster has 66 percent accuracy when predicting the outcome of Australian rugby games. The program is not the first of its kind, however; apparently several computers were put to work during the World Cup to predict the outcome of games.
What Others are Saying -- The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting an official at an Ohio horseracing track feels that racing is in "managed decline" because racing in other states and Internet gambling are taking away its business. Tom Aldrich, chief operating officer of the Northfield Park harness track, said the industry may have more economic trouble in the future if it continues to face competition from those two sources.
Monday, Dec. 16
Tidbits from Asia -- The Regional Development Council in the Philippines is asking the country's presidential administration to ban SMS-based numbers games. The council says the practice amounts to illegal gambling. The RDC is siding with the Department of Trade and Industry, which believes text-based "games or promos are basically gambling ploys in the guise of marketing or entertainment to raise the volume of text messages or awareness of a product." The agency also states that the SMS gaming resembles an online lottery because winners are chosen in a way that is similar to the way the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office chooses winners. ... Tuesday night's Mark Six lottery drawing could hit HK$46 million (nearly US$5.9 million), making it the largest Mark Six prize in 10 years. The lottery is operated by the Hong Kong Jockey Club. The probability of winning first prize is one in 14 million.
New Stuff -- GoldenPalace.com announced the launch of its new live casino, Golden Palace Live. Visitors to the new site gamble against live dealers. The casino is powered by live betting software developed by Casino Reality.
Breakin' Deals -- Italian electronics group Olivetti has withdrawn from the board of Cirsa, a Spanish gaming company. Olivetti occupied 5 percent of Cirsa's board. Olivetti also recently parted ways with its lottery subsidiary, Lottomatica.
Legal Stuff -- Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is likely to reintroduce his bill that would ban sports betting on college sports, the Associated Press is reporting. In the next session of Congress, McCain will head the Senate Commerce Committee. Frank Fahrenkopf, president of the American Gaming Association, is quoted by the Associated Press as saying that McCain's bill has made a lot of progress in the last few years and enjoys support from both liberals and conservatives.
US Tidbit -- The commission created in Massachusetts to study the expansion of gambling in the state has held its last meeting and is expected to file a report by the end of the year. The 19-member commission was created by Gov. Jane Swift on Oct. 21. on Dec. 2 commission member Bradley H. Jones was quoted in the Boston Globe as saying that Massachusetts is already paying the social costs of both land-based and Internet gambling and might as well legalize both activities to "maximize the benefit."