House Bill 697 was first introduced in April, and was approved by the House of Representatives earlier this month.
In addition to taxing retail bets and online bets at 10% and 18% respectively, the bill also proposes a $250,000 application fee for operating licenses and a $500,000 fee on receipt of the license itself.
William Hill took a majority holding in Alfabet in December and has now rebranded the existing BetAlfa.co sportsbook brand as WilliamHill.co to establish a presence in Colombia.
The new WilliamHill.co brand will operate via Alfabet’s existing licence in the country, which covers online gaming and sports betting.
The launch marks William Hill’s first roll out in the Latin American market.
“This launch includes the full integration of the Alfabet team into our international business hub in Malta and marks our first entry into a regulated Latin American state,” William Hill chief executive Ulrik Bengtsson said.
“We are delighted to have the Alfabet team join our international team and excited by the opportunity to deliver a very competitive product and safe player experience under the William Hill brand in Colombia.”
Upon announcing the acquisition deal, William Hill also revealed it had also brokered a new, Colombia-facing partnership with Btobet, the sportsbook technology provider acquired by Aspire Global in October last year.
The deal set out that Btobet would provide its player account management platform and sportsbook software to William Hill in the Colombian market.
Last month, Caesars Entertainment finalised its acquisition of William Hill. Caesars had previously that the target of the deal was William Hill’s US betting business and technology, with the remainder of the operator’s assets, including its UK arm, set to be sold.
The scheme would bring together people harmed by gambling and health experts, with the aim of providing a treatment and support system for people with gambling disorders and families affected by gambling.
Gambling with Lives said the service would work in collaboration with the National Health Service (NHS) in Great Britain and complement existing treatment and support systems.
The charity has applied for regulatory settlement funding from the Gambling Commission to support the project, with the idea of running a pilot of the scheme with partners in Greater Manchester
Insights from this process would be used to raise the standard of the system of gambling treatment and care nationally, including offering a model for making treatment and care for gambling harms a part of NHS integrated care systems.
“It is essential that people harmed by gambling are at the forefront of designing care and treatment for gambling disorder,” Gambling with Lives co-founder Liz Ritchie said. “We know how few people access treatment, how few feel helped, and this design for a care and treatment pathway aims to redress this.”
In terms of how the new scheme was developed, Gambling with Lives said it staged a series of focus groups with people who had live experience of gambling problems, as well as workshops with input from gambling operators, other support services, clinicians and expert by experience groups to help shape how the system would run.
Setting out the core aims of the pathway in the proposal, the charity said that overarching aim is to allow more people to access help and treatment, adding that early identification of problem gambling will be key.
The charity is also keen to ensure people can easily access help and achieve what they want from this support, as well as to prevent suicides linked to gambling problems.
Gambling with Lives said that the scheme would be embedded within existing health, care and public service provision, with frontline professionals to be made aware of the pathway so as they can refer people to the scheme if necessary.
Gambling with Lives also set out how the programme would run, including the initial stage of promoting it and running education programmes to make people aware of it, as well as running professional outreach and screening projects to identify people suitable for the scheme.
The programme would then identify the next source of action, including information and education on problem gambling, early help and advice, motivational interviews, peer support and therapeutic treatment. This would also be the case for those contacting the programme on behalf of others, with advice and support to be made available.
After treatment takes place, the programme would follow up with all participants to see their progress and evaluate whether further support and treatment is required.
Gambling with Lives said that there would be a number of end goals to the project, including people stopping gambling altogether, improving their mental health, feeling they had been adequately support, having a sense of greater empowerment and understanding the impact of their gambling habits on their own lives and other around them.
Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones, founder and director of the National Problem Gambling Clinic, welcomed the proposal, saying integration within the wider NHS network would help those suffering with gambling-related harm.
“It is essential that evidence-based services are led by the NHS to ensure quality clinical standards,” Bowden-Jones said. “I welcome this project and the work of people harmed by gambling in helping us to ensure that services are integrated with existing NHS pathways and really meet the needs of our population.”
Lord Foster of Bath, chair of peers for Gambling Reform, added: “As parliamentarians work on improving gambling legislation to tackle gambling harm, it’s great to see people who have been harmed by gambling at the forefront of the push to enable more access to evidence-based treatment.
“Our recommendation for the introduction of a smart levy should help fund such treatment, ensure it’s free of industry influence and led by the NHS. We welcome the creative work of Gambling with Lives in this area which is rooted in the needs of families.”
The new proposal comes after Gambling with Lives earlier this month announced the launch of the Big Step campaign, which is calling for an end to all gambling promotion in football.
Backed by English League Two team Forest Green Rovers, the campaign aims to see the end of all gambling sponsorship and advertising in football, where currently there are thought to be 55 different gambling sponsorship or partnership deals with 44 football clubs in the top two divisions in England.
Arreche will be prohibited from competing in or attending any sanctioned tennis event organised by the governing bodies of the sport. The suspension is effective immediately.
The ITIA did not disclose further details about the case, but did say that an investigation into alleged breaches of the Tennis Anti-Corruption Program (TACP) is ongoing.
Section F.3 of the TACP 2021 states that a player can be provisionally suspended while an investigation takes place.
Arreche is currently placed 612th in the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) world singles rankings.
The provisional suspension comes after the ITIA earlier this month banned Kazakhstan’s Roman Khassanov for 10 years after he admitted to several instances of match-fixing.
The instances took place between 2014 and 2018, and were in violation of the TACP.
Issued by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, the Interactive Gaming Manufacturer License will permit Gaming Realms to roll out its content in the state.
The licence marks Gaming Realms’ third such approval in the US, with the developer also holding similar permits in New Jersey and Michigan.
Gaming Realms’ executive chairman Michael Buckley said plans are in place to expand its presence in the US further, with the developer now eyeing licences in other states.
“We are now licenced in the three largest states for igaming and look forward to more states regulating in the future,” Buckley said.
“We have signed a number of multi-state deals and direct integration agreements with some of the largest operators in the US, giving an excellent opportunity to capitalise on the expansion of the exciting US igaming market.”
Bet365 joins Betsson in receiving a license to operate in the country, after the Swedish supplier announced its approval to offer both betting and gaming yesterday.
Play’n Go, meanwhile, is the first supplier to announce it is licensed under the new regulatory system.
However, under this system, operators and suppliers must abide by a number of strict operating conditions. Online slots – which an earlier draft of the regulations had sought to ban – are capped at €2 per spin, with a three-second spin minimum and a maximum win of €70,000 per round.
Operating licence holders, meanwhile, must pay a 35% gross gaming revenue tax rate.
“Regulatory changes are a constant in the global gaming industry, and we welcome the new clarity provided by the Hellenic Gaming Commission in their latest framework,” Magnus Olsson, head of sales and account management for Play’n Go, said.
“We will now work closely with our partners to ensure that their Greek operations are compliant with the new regulations.”
Olson added that he felt the supplier’s ability to customise games to local regulations would help it stand out in the market.
“We take immense pride in our games,” he said. “But we also love to bring more to the table too.
“The rigour in our approach to both compliance and game development ensures that our partners can rely on us to deliver entertaining content that is ready for all of their players to enjoy from the first day of global release, across multiple markets.
“But to truly enjoy a gaming experience, players must feel safe. And that’s why we’re only too happy to tailor our titles to ensure they comply with all local rules in regulated markets all over the world.”
The Greek licensing system opened in October of last year, after the country’s parliament passed the gambling reform bill in 2019.
The ADW licence will allow WatchandWager to accept pari-mutuel wagers in West Virginia, and will be renewable on an annual basis.
West Virginia is the home of the Charlestown Races, Mountaineer Racetrack for Thoroughbreds, the Tri-State Mardi Gras and Wheeling Island greyhound tracks.
Read the full story on iGB North America.
The move signals Bally’s latest foray into the sports betting market, following the opening of a FanDuel-affiliated sportsbook in Atlantic City in March, but marks the first launch of its own online product.
Developed by Bet.Works – a sportsbook technology platform in the process of being acquired by Bally’s – BallyBet will contain betting options for major sports, social features and in-app parlay games.
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Instead, the regulator is to focus on developing measures to prevent customers losing significant sums gambling, and preventing those that are particularly financially vulnerable from being harmed by the industry.
The consultation opened in November 2020 and was extended in December due to a high volume of responses. The Commission received around 13,000 submissions in total, of which roughly 1,000 were full consultation responses and 12,000 were answers to a short survey.
While it dealt with a wide range of topics related to player interaction, much of the attention around the consultation centred on the proposal for a mandatory affordability threshold, with a suggested figure of £100 per month.
This proposal – criticised by some industry groups such as the Gambling Business Group (GBG) – was not listed as one of the main priorities for action for the regulator, after its review of the consultation responses.
The regulator’s acting joint chief executive, Sarah Gardner, had suggested as much last week in a speech at the 2021 Financial Vulnerability Summit. There, she announced that the Commission’s “immediate action” will be to stop players from gambling “clearly unaffordable” amounts.
The Commission has now reaffirmed this focus by outlining the three key risks that it will prioritise for action, which do not include affordability thresholds.
The first of these priorities is preventing players from making significant losses in a very short time.
“These cases are relatively rare but have very significant impacts on the consumers affected,” the regulator said, citing one example of a player who lost £4,000 in six minutes.
Similarly, the next area of priority is putting in safeguards to prevent significant losses over time. Here, the Commission said it is appropriate to require checks for these customers, with examples including a customer who lost £35,000 over two months.
Finally, the regulator said it would look to introduce further measures for cases where customer data shows the individual is “particularly financially vulnerable and likely to be harmed by their level of gambling”.
However, the Gambling Commission said it will continue its work on affordability thresholds.
“We will also proceed as planned with a consultation on thresholds for operators to take action and guidance on what those actions should be,” the regulator added.
The Gambling Commission added that it will continue to work with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) on the Gambling Act Review, which asks questions across a number of areas. These include both hard and soft limits for deposits.
