Friday, March 19
Re-launching -- Kiss Casino has ended its relationship with Boss Media and has re-launched its Web site using RealTime Gaming's software. Kiss Casino asked its customers to close their accounts before March 31 and then return to download the new RTG software. Like its sister site, Giant Vegas, Kiss Casino will be managed by Thorsten Hillebrecht, a former executive of Global Player. . . . Virtual City.com has re-launched with new futuristic graphics and upgraded Viper software. The site now features expert mode options, easy navigation, game descriptions, sound options and regular additions of new games.
Settlement -- Torbjorn Ihre, a lobbyist for the European Betting Association (EBA) said this week that the association does not bar betting exchanges from joining its ranks. He stated, "EBA has in its Articles of Association rules for which companies can apply for membership. EBA has never considered refusing membership to betting exchanges."
Environmental Impact -- British betting group Rank has been removed from the FTSE4Good, an index of ethically sound and socially responsible companies. Rank failed to meet the index's standards by not establishing a policy to monitor and minimize its environmental impact.
Belle Rock Gaming -- The Carmen Media Group is linking its seven flagship online casinos and three poker rooms together to form one large group, Belle Rock Gaming, operating under one Gibraltar license. Each of the individual operations will continue to offer the same games and interfaces. All of the Belle Rock Gaming Group's casino's have received the eCOGRA seal of approval for fair gaming, prompt payments, player service, and responsible conduct. Belle Rock plans to offer huge promotions and group loyalty appreciation programs.
Wireless Casino -- Costa Rica-based Tengel Corp has released Casino4Wireless.com, a wireless casino application that was built with the group's own proprietary technology. Casino4Wireless supports wireless connections via external modem, GPRS base, WiFi and Bluetooth. Player information is kept secure through RSA 2048-bit encryption.
America Tab -- Account wagering provider America Tab announced that it plans to take bets on foreign racing events. The company has filed a request for approval with the Oregon Racing Commission, but would likely not abandon its plans if its request were rejected. Horesemen's groups and Magna Entertainment argue that by offering wagers on foreign racing America Tab will hurt American racetracks' revenue streams, but America Tab's Charlie Ruma disagrees. "Quite frankly, it has nothing to do with the United States. It puts no one in the U.S. in jeopardy," he said.
Blackout -- The Australian Hotel Association (AHA) sought a federal court injunction against the Sky Channel and its owner Tab Ltd from blacking out Sydney horse races. The AHA claims that Sky Channel is breaching its contract by refusing to broadcast the events. Pubs and hotels are often the only place punters can watch the races. The court said it was unable to deliver a decision without further deliberation on the matter.
Thursday, March 18
Blackout -- Tab Ltd.'s Sky Channel will begin blacking out horse racing at Sydney race tracks on Saturday because it was unable to negotiate an agreement with the Sydney Turf Club (STC) and the Australian Jockey Club (AJC) over an extension of the broadcasting rights, which expired two weeks ago. The STC and AJC wanted to sign a 14-month contract so that they could later renegotiate with the collective bargaining power of Victoria Racing, but Sky Channel's Warren Wilson said it was not in the best interest of his company's shareholders to parallel the end dates of the contracts with Victoria Racing and Sydney Racing. Sky Channel and the Sydney clubs are terminating a relationship that existed for 16 years. The clubs plan to begin airing their own racing channel on the Foxtel Satellite network within six to eight weeks.
Sharp Minds -- Betfair will attribute most of the £20 million it plans to raise from a repositioning toward direct and online communications. The company wants to emphasize to the public that it allows betting on almost anything. Betfair also plans to increase its sponsorship deals. Just this week at the Cheltenham festival, the company unveiled a new logo and slogan: Sharp Minds Betfair.
Sky News -- The China Post reports that 20 residents of Taiwan were questioned by police yesterday for illegally betting on the presidential election. Those questioned placed their bets with Easybets.com, which is licensed in the United Kingdom and Costa Rica. According to the China Post, "Police investigators said the cross-border online betting, which is illegal in Taiwan, started two months ago, when a Hong Kong bookmaker, identified as Mo Hsiao-mei, came to Taipei to set up the betting scheme." An inspector said he will ask Interpol to help Taiwan's police catch Mo Hsiao-mei and two other bookmakers operating online, though he is not sure if Interpol will help.
Continued Hacking -- Totalbet was down for the second day in a row today due to ongoing DDOS attacks. Parent company ukbetting saw its shares drop 2.5 percent as it was unable to process hundreds of thousands of pounds in betting on the Cheltenham Festival. Two other ukbetting sites, sportinglife.com and ukbetting.com, were also temporarily brought down by the massive 900 megabit attack.
NETeller Float -- Market analysts speculate that NETeller's flotation on the AIM could raise about £50 million. The Isle of Man-based transaction processor might try to float by the end of the month and may be worth around £200 million, which would make it among the AIM top 10 companies. The company earned £700,000 income in the last financial year. NETeller has dealings with William Hill, Ladbrokes, betandwin.com, Poker Stars and Casino on Net.
Virgin Games -- Optimistic of upcoming changes to England's gambling legislation, Virgin Group plans to launch an online gaming portal, Virgin Games, in June. The site will offer a casino, instant-win games, arcade games, bingo, and more powered by WagerWorks. Virgin's casino is licensed in Alderney and the company's betting license is with the UK. Virgin plans to implement many crossover promotions with the gaming portal and some of the company's other web sites, like Virgin Atlantic. Oscar Nieboer, vice president of MGM Mirage Online, will serve as managing director for Virgin Games.
Wednesday, March 17
Cheltenham DDoS -- The Cheltenham Festival, one of Britain's largest betting events, began yesterday, and as expected, hackers have begun trying to skim off as much profit as they can by knocking betting sites offline through DDoS attacks and then holding them at ransom. Reports indicate that William Hill's service was targeted and temporarily disrupted last Thursday, and the same thing happened to betting exchange Betdaq on Friday. Totalbet and ukbetting were also brought down for some time yesterday. None of those four sites submitted to the ransom demands.
Poker Tourney -- The PartyPoker Million tournament has broken World Poker Tour records for participants and prize money. Five hundred forty-six players have paid the $7,000 entry fee for a chance to win a piece of the $3.8 million in prize money. The top 90 finishers will collect a prize, with the winner raking in a cool $1 million Last year's winner took home $263,850, when the prize pool was just $1 million and only 177 players signed up to play. The tournament's final table will be filmed on March 18 for broadcast on the Travel Channel.
P2P Hacking -- The Washington Post reports that computer hackers have begun using a Trojan horse that uses peer-to-peer (P2P) networking techniques similar to those used by file-sharing networks like Kazaa and Morpheus. Security experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of personal and business computers across the world have been infected by the program Phatbot, which allows the authors to link infected computers to a P2P network so that they can be used to flood Web sites with DDoS attacks or to send massive amounts of spam. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security alerted security groups last week that Phatboot also tries to obtain user passwords and disable firewall and anti-virus software.
PlayMonteCarlo -- OpenTV's subsidiary BettingCorp UK is re-launching fixed-odds betting portal PlayMonteCarlo on Channel 7 on Sky Digital's interactive main menu with additional bandwidth on the satellite platform. PlayMonteCarlo, which offers soft fixed-odds games like slots, keno, dice and virtual horse racing for both free-play and real-money gambling, can also be accessed through the Sky Active portal and through OpenTV's PlayJam Channel 3.
Tuesday, March 16
Faithful Defense -- Kim Faithful, the bank manager sentenced to five years in prison for stealing nearly $19 million from the bank to feed an online gambling addiction, successfully defended against an appeal by Western Australia's top prosecutor. Director of Public Prosecutions Robert Cock argued to have Faithful's sentence doubled, but the Western Australia Supreme Court of Criminal Appeal ruled today that the punishment was appropriate.
World Series of Blackjack -- The GameShow Network changed its name to GSN yesterday, and last night it aired the first of seven episodes of the World Series of Blackjack. The show features a format similar to the World Poker Tour's, with broadcast commentators and statistics. GSN is also introducing five new games on its website that correspond directly to the channel's broadcasts. Players can participate in a free blackjack tournament that takes place while the World Series of Blackjack airs. The winner is the player with the most money at the end of the program.
Carruthers Speaks -- In a recent press release, BetonSports.com's CEO David Carruthers argued that legislation in the United States should be based on three main principals. The first principal is that the states, not the federal government, should develop online gaming regulations; after all, the states draft legislation for horse racing, lotteries, and casinos. Second, he says, the same consumer protections that exist in land-based betting should extend to online gaming. Third, prohibition--the route the government seems to be taking by preventing media companies from running advertisements for the industry--is the wrong course of action.
Quoteworthy -- "I think it’s fair to say that not only have we been overtaken, we’re eating dust"-- Roger Smeed, IASBet, speaking at the Pacific Conference on I-Gaming last week regarding Australia's no longer being the world leader in online gambling.
Monday, March 15
Horseracing Analysis Network -- LegalPlay Entertainment, the operator of SkillPoker.com, announced that it has begun the final stages of beta testing its Web-based horse racing analysis software. The system is designed to give bettors in-depth race analysis, predictions and betting strategies. The company plans to offer the platform on a subscription basis at www.DailyHorse.com. LegalPlay is in negotiations with content and news providers to offer such services on the DailyHorse network, which is expected to go live in April.
Canadian Lottery -- The Atlantic Lottery would like to be the first lottery in Canada to offer games online. The company's president, Michelle Carinci, said that Atlantic Canadians are already spending $20 million on offshore Internet gaming sites. By going online, the Atlantic Lottery could keep some of that money in its own region while at the same time providing citizens with fun entertainment.
Betfair Float -- Betfair has denied a report that the U.K. government's plans to more tightly monitor and regulate betting exchanges will have any effect on its upcoming float on the AIM. Betfair is hoping to raise £25 million through share offering. England's inevitable new gambling bill is likely to include clauses that will give a Gambling Commission powers to monitor betting exchanges and perhaps even require professional gamblers to pay to a tax. The Observer reported that the float now seems unlikely, but Andrew Silverman, Betfair's director of public affairs, said, "The modernization of gaming laws is something that we support and we have not mooted any such plans to float."
Cricket -- International cricket officials, who have been taking many precautions lately to insure against illegal match-fixing, have drafted new rules stating that anyone who is "reasonably suspected" of match-fixing will be banned from any future employment in International Cricket Council and the boards of the 10 Test-playing countries.
In-game Betting at FOBTs -- Cyberview Technology, a company that provides fixed-odds betting terminal solutions to British bookmaking shops, will help Interactive Systems Worldwide's subsidiary Global Interactive Gaming (GIG) distribute and market its in-game betting SportXction Sytem to bookmakers in the United Kingdom and Europe for use in betting shops. GIG and Cyberview would like to sell touch-screen gaming products that enable punters to place bets on in-game activities, such as whether a penalty kick will be successful. The companies want to establish agreements with bookmakers that would provide all parties with certain minimum fees and a share of wagering revenue.
More Clauses -- The U.K. Department of Culture, Media, and Sport has published another list of clauses for the new draft Gambling Bill. The provisions ban chain gifting schemes and maintain the status quo on credit inducements by gambling operators by maintaining a prohibition on casinos and fruit machines that accept credit cards.
TradingSports Supplies to Golanta -- Betting exchange software provider TradingSports Exchange Systems is supplying Cyprus-based Golanta Sports with a P2P system that will enable punters worldwide to bet on Turkish, U.K. and other European sporting events. In exchange for providing Golanta with a multi-currency multi-lingual system, TradingSports will receive a percents of all margins generated through Golanta's exchange service, which will be integrated with Golanta's sports book and casino offerings at SporBorsa.com.
Sportech -- Sportech plans to cut back on its horseracing betting offerings after reporting poor figures in its latest financial report. The company will redirect its focus primarily on sports betting, with an emphasis on soccer.
Quoteworthy -- "This type of betting is the fastest growing but unregulated form of gambling, with one U.K.-based operator alone turning over an estimated $150 million a week. It is a basic right for any great sport such as racing to control its intellectual property rights without being undermined by freeloading gambling operators, and consumers need to be protected as well." -- John Pandazopoulos, Victoria's Racing Minister, urging Australian government officials in Canberra on Friday to take action against betting exchanges which are costing the industry millions of dollars each year.
State Bill -- Washington State's Senate has approved a bill that would allow Internet and telephone wagering on horse racing with a 42-7 vote. The bill, which was also approved by the House of Representatives last week, has been sent to Governor Gary Locke, who will likely sign it into law.