Friday, July 29
Quoteworthy -- "To the extent that the DOJ criticizes Casino City for not presenting lesser restrictive means as alternatives to the district court, Casino City points out that the record in this case is not yet developed. Moreover, if there is any pertinent omission pertaining to this point, it is that the DOJ has failed to show why it has chosen, contrary to United States Supreme Court precedent, to address the asserted harms by regulating speech rather than the underlying activity."
- Final paragraph of Casino City's appellant reply brief in its First Amendment declaratory judgment case against the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The brief was filed Thursday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth District.
Technology Acquisition -- U.K.-based interactive TV and mobile services specialist Two Way TV has acquired the interactive technology assets of London-based Mindhouse, a company that was developing a delivery platform to enable cost-effective management of interactive services across satellite, terrestrial, cable, broadband, online and mobile channels. Mindhouse was founded in late 2001 but placed in administration in June 2005 after failing to secure enough finance.
Personnel Changes -- Betfair has announced the resignation of its chief financial officer, Owen O'Donnel, but has not yet named a successor. The news has fueled speculation that O'Donnel has stepped down so that the company can be led by a CFO with more IPO experience. . . . Incumbent Chairman Moses Cheng has been reappointed to serve another two-year term on the Hong Kong Football Betting & Lotteries Commission. Other members include Paul Chan, Ho Hon-kuen, Father Peter Newbery, Paul Fan, Felix Fong, Fanny Lai, Albert Hung and Wong Kwan-yu. The Commissioner of Police, the Permanent Secretary for Education & Manpower and the Director of Home Affairs will also sit on the commission, which is responsible for addressing a wide range of public concerns on authorized football betting and lotteries and advising the government on gambling regulation matters. . . . Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) has appointed Caroline Gray as manager of its betting division. Gray has spent the last five years working in the HRI finance department.
Czech Stats -- The Czech Republic's finance ministry has reported that revenues from phone betting in the country has doubled in the last year. Sales from phone bets, which are frequently placed in conjunction with television programs, are rising at a rate of dozens of millions of crowns each year. Three Czech companies--Erika, Media Games and Ceskomoravska loterijni--have obtained licenses to offer phone betting services in the country. Erika, whose sales have improved from Kc160 million (US$6.4 million) to Kc245 million (US$9.8 million) in the last year, says that telephone betting accounts for about half of its activities.
Malta Stats -- Malta's Remote Gaming Council held its first general meeting this week. Representatives from over 40 companies, including gaming firms, legal firms, financial firms and Internet service providers were in attendance. The council's main goal is to field suggestions from its members and submit them to Malta's Lotteries and Gaming Authority. At the moment, 25 companies have received licenses from the Lotteries and Gaming Authority, while another 35 are waiting for the clearance of their applications. Malta's gaming industry employs about 240 local full-time employees, pays around $7.9 million annually in taxes, and uses about ten percent of the islands' Internet bandwidth.
Case Dropped -- German prosecutors have dropped their case against Juergen Jansen, the only top flight Bundesliga referee implicated in this year's German football betting scandal, due to a lack of evidence. Jansen faced charges of fixing two games in November 2004 based on evidence provided by a man who claimed he had been sent to give Jansen 25,000 to influence a game. That man now acknowledges that he had held on to the money, and the league states that Jansen did not make any wrong calls. 20 to 25 other people, including a number of players, remain under investigation for their alleged involvement in the fixing scandal.
Premiere Shops -- German pay TV channel Premiere AG, which will launch a betting channel called Premiere Win on Aug. 1, says it may also begin setting up local betting shops. CEO Gerog Kofler says that the company already has an ideal, large-scale infrastructure with over 11,000 Premier sports bars. Premiere Win will be run in partnership with North American racecourse operator Magna Entertainment Corp.
AOL Bingo -- Online bingo company Bingo.co.uk will provide AOL UK with a bingo games platform that will be available to AOL UK users over the age of 18.
Thursday, July 28
Sharp Minds -- Betfair and British cellular operator O2 have signed an agreement that will make the Betfair betting exchange available on O2 Xda ll mobile phones. A simplified version of the Betfair exchange network has been available to certain mobile users via a WAP interface, but the new O2 version is designed to provide an exact replication of the Internet exchange. Powered by mobile software provider Rapid Mobile, the service will also offer streaming odds updates. . . . Representatives from Betfair met today with five of Tasmania's 10 Legislative Council members in an effort to gain support of the company's attempt to gain a license to operate a betting exchange in the state. The support of at least three independent members of Parliament would be necessary for Premiere Paul Lennon's government to pass the appropriate legislation to license Betfair's exchange. Independent Ivan Dean told ABC News Online, "There probably are a lot of gains in it for Tasmania on the briefing we've had, but like other members, I still want to hear from the [racing] industry." Meanwhile, Betfair spokesperson Andrew Twaits said the company can't accurately predict how much money would come from its contribution of 35 percent of its gross revenue to the racing industry and state taxes. "On today's figures alone, the percentages that we're talking about would run into the millions of dollars, rather than the hundreds of thousands of dollars," he said.
Italian Job -- Another match-fixing scandal has emerged in Italian football, but this time no gambling was involved. The recently promoted team from Genoa was demoted from Serie A to the third division after an Italian Football League disciplinary commission investigation discovered that the team paid 250,000 euro to its opponent, Venezia, to guarantee the results of the final game of the season. Apparently the main aim of the fix was to obtain a promotion for Genoa to the higher league. Last year six players from Italy's top two divisions were banned from the sport because of their involvement in gambling-related match fixing.
Sponsorship -- Sportech's LittlewoodsPoker.com subsidiary has become the exclusive sponsor of a new celebrity poker show called "All Star Poker Challenge" on British television channel ITV. The sponsorship extends to the show's Web site at ITV.com/poker and also features betting and gaming content from Littlewoods Game On behind the red interactive button before, during and after the broadcast of the show.
Teen Gambling -- A new study on teenage gambling in New Zealand conducted by Auckland University estimates that two out of every three teenagers in New Zealand have participated in some form of gambling in the past year and that 3.4 percent have gambling problems--a rate that is twice as high as that of adults. Instant Kiwi "scratchies" tickets were the most popular form of gambling. Meanwhile, SkyCity Casino has reported that more than 23,000 underage teens have attempted to gamble on the casino floor in the last year.
Tabcorp in China -- Victoria-based Tabcorp announced that its joint-venture with Hong Kong-listed World Metal Holdings has won a 10-year technology and services agreement to operate and run lottery products across China for Beijing Lottery Online Technology. Tabcorp and its partner will install at least 60,000 Keno terminals in 30 provinces within the first five years. The deal, which is expected to generate about $50 million a year for Tabcorp in the next five years, marks the first time a foreign company has been invited to participate at a nationwide level in China's lottery market.
Corporate Web Site -- Multi-platform remote gaming solutions provider Zone4Play has launched a new corporate Web site that showcases its products and solutions through Flash demos and game show reels.
Wednesday, July 27
Ownership Split -- The owners of two payment services companies--ePassporte, which sells pre-paid Virtual Visa and Visa Electron cards to online consumers, and Paycom.net, processor of online payment transactions--have divided their business interests. Joe Hall and Clayton Andrews, the original co-founders of Paycom.net are now the sole owners of Paycom.net, while Christopher Mallick, who joined Hall and Andrews later, is now the sole owner of ePassporte. Neither company's business model will change. Paycom.net will remain in its current offices in Southern California, while ePassporte will have a representative office in Southern California, with its corporate headquarters and majority of its business activities remaining in Curacao.
No Appeal -- Following its defeat in a British Court of Appeal last week, the British Horseracing Board has confirmed that it will not appeal its data rights dispute with William Hill to the House of Lords.
Stole to Gamble -- Newspapers across Australia are this week reporting the tale of Keith Fernandez of Melbourne, a stamp duty collector for Victoria's State Revenue Office who stole more than AU$10 million between 1998 and 2000 to fuel his gambling sprees. Prosecutor Gavin Silbert claims that Fernandez paid more than $3 million into a Vanuatu-based Dial-A-Bet account. He also put half a million dollars into a Tabcorp betting account.
Gambling Ties -- The Las Vegas Review Journal reports that John Roberts, the man recently nominated by U.S. President George Bush to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, has ties to the gambling industry. In 1999 Roberts filed briefs for the American Gaming Association (AGA) in support of the Greater New Orleans Broadcasting Association case before the Supreme Court. Though he did not appear during oral argument sessions, Roberts was the counsel of record. In that capacity Roberts wrote that an advertising ban could not be justified by "the perceived dangers of commercial casino gambling." The court unanimously ruled in the case that banning television and radio advertisements for casinos violates the First Amendment. Roberts has also apparently known AGA president Frank Fahrenkopf since 1986, when they worked at the same Washington law firm, Hogan & Harston. Fahrenkopf told the Review Journal that he did not think Roberts would have to recuse himself if any lawsuits involving Internet gambling were to appear before the Supreme Court.
More Shops Sold -- Coral Eurobet, Britain's third largest betting shop operator, has purchased 49 Bet365 outlets, mostly in the Midlands area. The company says the shops will continue to operate under the Bet365 brand. Bet365's chief executive, John Coates, whose father started the business in 1974, explained that although he had some sentimental regrets about letting the shops ago, it was necessary to strengthen the company's new core business of remote gambling, which now accounts for about 90 percent of its expected £700 million turnover. A remaining 10 Bet365 shops that were not sold to Coral will likely revert to the Backhouse name.
Tuesday, July 26
EC Action Postponed -- E.U. Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy of Ireland hoped to launch copyright infringement proceedings on July 13 against E.U. member states Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, Italy, Greece and Finland for denying gambling operators that are located elsewhere in the European Union from accessing their markets, but a lack of consensus among European commissioners has prompted the EC to postpone doing so until September or October. McCreevy now says that action would only be taken following a debate between commissioners. According to Europe Information Services, about 8 of the 25 other commissioners are opposed to removing national gambling monopolies in these states, including EC President Jose Manuel Barroso of Portugal, Development Commissioner Louis Michel of Belgium and Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot of France.
Tax Scheme -- Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon told the state's three racing codes what percentage of Betfair's profits they could expect to receive if the betting exchange were to become licensed to operate in Tasmania. If licensed, Betfair would deliver 25 percent of its gross profit from racing revenues to the horse racing industry. Meanwhile, the Tasmanian government would receive 15 percent of Betfair's commissions on bets on Australian sporting events. The government would distribute one-third of its take to the racing industry, 4 percent to the community service levy and the rest to the consolidated fund. The Tasmanian Thoroughbred Racing Council decided Monday that it will request a full business case into the economic benefits of granting Betfair a license. The council would like to know whether estimates placing the industry's share of the annual product fee at $200,000 are correct because it finds that amount inadequate. Lennon reportedly believes the actual figure would be significantly larger.
Mobile Forecasts -- A new report by research and intelligence firm Informa Telecoms & Media predicts that mobile phone gambling will increase from a $1.2 billion industry to a $7.6 billion industry by the year 2010. The company expects Europe to remain the largest market, while the United States will provide about $1 billion. The report also predicts that computer games over mobile phones will be the fastest growing form of mobile entertainment and should rise from $2.6 billion to $11 billion by 2010. The overall mobile entertainment market is expected to rise to $42.8 billion by 2010.
Online Backgammon -- TrueMoneygames.com, a Curacao-based site offering real-money backgammon and poker, says the number of player registrations on its backgammon server has doubled to almost 40,000 since 2004. The company also estimates that more than 500,000 people play online backgammon globally. Dennis Carlston of the United States on Monday won the 2005 Backgammon World Championship at the Fairmont Monte Carlo, claiming $100,000 from a tournament that boasted a $320,000 prize pool. The tournament's final match between Carlston and another American, John O'Hagan, was streamed live on TrueMoneygames.com and watched by hundreds of backgammon players around the world. The match was automatically analyzed and commented on in real-time by "Snowie," a SnowieGroup-developed backgammon software tool based on artificial intelligence.
Trademark Protection -- WPT Enterprises announced today that it has won a number of legal battles regarding copyright and trademark infringement in recent months. Among those victories is a case against I-gaming software provider WagerLogic Ltd. for trademark infringement relating to four trademark applications filed in Canada (Interpoker World Poker Tour, Wagerlogic World Poker Tour, Interpoker World Poker Tournament and Wagerlogic World Poker Tournament). WPTE says it was also successful in litigating intellectual property violations by 5thstreet.proboards39.com for copyright infringement of four WPT episodes posted for Bit Torrent downloads; Playworldpokertour.net for trademark domain name infringement matter; Wpt.cl and Worldpokertour.cl for trademark domain name infringement in Chile; the Ultimate Poker Challenge TV show for copyright and trademark infringement for the use of WPTE footage and for superimposing the Ultimate Poker Challenge mark over the World Poker Tour mark; the Mid-Ohio Super Satellite No Limit Championship for trademark infringement relating to the tournament being falsely billed as an official world poker tour satellite tournament; and World Poker Productions, Inc. for trademark infringement for use of a name and a poker-related Web site and in connection with the sale of instructional poker videos. "World Poker Tour is a globally recognizable brand, and we will aggressively police the misuse of our intellectual property, to ensure the quality control of satellite events and products associated with our first class series of poker events," WPTE's general counsel, Adam Pliska, stated, "WPTE will protect our brands and goodwill to sustain the loyalty of our poker fans, television viewers and consumers."
Monday, July 25
Neteller Changes -- Isle of Man-based online payment processor Neteller Plc has welcomed Ronald Martin as its new chief operating officer. Before joining Neteller, Martin held varied executive positions at companies such as FirstService Corporation, Job Advantage.com, Salesnet Inc. and most recently Globoforce Ltd. Neteller has also proposed the appointment KPMG Audit LLC to act as the its auditors. Deloitte & Touche will continue to provide ancillary services to Neteller.
Instant Games -- Danish Lottery Dansk Tipstjeneste will launch new instant lottery games on its Internet site using software designed by Iceland-based I-gaming software provider Betware. The new games will utilize Trusted Play, the instant-bet random number generator designed by Rhode Island-based (USA) Szrek2Solutions.
Turkish Efforts -- Turkish newspaper Zaman reports that the Turkish government is again trying to find a way to stop the increasing rate of online gambling by its citizens. The Justice and Development Party deputy Ertugrul Yalcinbayir has submitted a motion for question to the Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu, which reportedly stated, "Thirty gambling sites are available for Turkish people. What means can prevent our people from gambling? What is the economic size of online and other kinds of gambling in Turkey? Does Turkey have the power to prevent online gambling? What kinds of precautions can be taken?" Because the Internet gambling sites that cater to the Turkish market are based in offshore jurisdictions where Internet gambling is legal, the Interior Ministry has been able to do little other than contact the 30 Internet sites and demand that their services not be made available to Turkish residents.
Atlantic Lottery -- The Atlantic Lottery Corporation of Canada has released its annual report, the chief highlight of which is a return of $426 million in profit to the four Atlantic provinces. The Lotteries Commission of New Brunswick received $123 million, the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador received $118 million, the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation received $168 million and the Prince Edward Island Lotteries Commission received $17 million. The Atlantic Lottery Corporation, the first lottery in Canada to offer players the ability to purchase lottery games on the Internet (through its PlaySphere Internet site), awarded players more than $319 in total prizes last year. . . . The Atlantic Lottery Corporation has made changes to its senior management team by appointing Pierre La France, formerly of Spielo/GTECH as vice president of social gaming and appointing Bert McWade as vice president of Gaming Development.
Poker Float -- Excapsa, operator of Ultimate Bet, has hired investment dealer Canaccord Capital to advise it on a possible listing on the London Stock Exchange. If it were to float, the company would likely try to raise £30 million and seek a valuation between £145 million and £200 million. Kahnawake-licensed Ultimate Bet has been online for five years and is ranked as the seventh-largest Internet poker room according to PokerPulse.com. Excapsa, which is headed by chief executive Jim Ryan, launched a U.K. site in May under the Ultimate Poker brand.
Betfair Meeting -- Betfair founder Edward Wray and other representatives of the betting exchange are scheduled to meet with independent MLCs in Tasmania on Thursday over the prospect of being licensed in Tasmania. The meeting is important for the company because the licensing of a betting exchange would require a legislative change, which would require action on behalf of the 15-member Upper House.