Month: December 2021

The studio has been built on the existing Swiss Casinos site in Zurich and is the first of its kind in the country, as well as only the second such facility in Europe. 

Swiss Casinos operates four land-based casinos in Switzerland and first partnered with Playtech in 2019 to launch an online casino in the country, as well as the Playtech online poker network in 2020

The new studio offers Swiss players access to the Playtech live tables via the casino website and includes a number of live roulette formats, plus other table games including multiple blackjack formats.

“The new Playtech Live studio in Zurich is a real testament to the close partnership that Playtech has established with Swiss Casinos,” Margarita Terlanova, senior customer relations manager for Playtech Live, said.

“By both teams working closely together, we have been able to deliver an industry-leading online experience that mirrors the feeling of playing inside one of Swiss Casinos’ leading land-based casinos.”

Swiss Casinos online director Patrick Mastai added: “The live dealer offering that we can deliver to our customers is unrivalled and the new, first of its kind studio in Switzerland has been built to an incredibly high standard. 

“Working so closely with the dedicated and skilled Playtech Live team has also been a great experience. We look forward to developing this partnership further as we continue to grow our product and content offering in Switzerland.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but GAN did confirm that the acquisition provides it with the exclusive global rights to all current and future Silverback online games, which it expects will include 50 new slot games over the next three years.

GAN also said the deal would strengthen its SuperRGS offering, following the launch of the content suite in the US last month. Silverback’s existing portfolio of online slot games will launch within SuperRGS from the first half of 2022.

Silverback, which has offices in the UK and Bulgaria, distributes content to more than 100 B2C operators across regulated European markets and counts titles such as Aztec Luck and Mystery Stacks among its games.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

The Maryland Lottery and Gaming Commission’s (MLGCC) Sports Wagering Application Review Commission (SWARC) last month issued five sports betting licences to land-based casinos, with the aim of taking the first legal bets within the two months.

Penn National’s Hollywood Casino in Perryville; Caesars Entertainment’s Horseshoe Casino in Baltimore; Cordish Companies’ Live! Casino & Hotel in Hanover; the MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill and Churchill Downs’ Ocean Downs Casino in Berlin all secured licences.

The MLGCC had previously cleared the quintet to receive licences earlier this year.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

Revenue for the three months to September 30, 2021 amounted to $391.2m, up 33.1% from $294.0m in the corresponding period last year.

MGE put this growth primarily down to the easing of novel coronavirus (Covid-19) measures across the US, with is casinos able to operate with only minimal restrictions throughout the quarter.

Gaming revenue hiked 24.7% to $286,7m, while hotel revenue climbed 52.2% to $28.4m, food and beverage revenue 125.4% to $28.4m and retail, entertainment and other revenue 46.3% to $47.7m.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

First announced last month, the agreed purchase price for the deal was $15.5m on a cash and debt-free basis, with $12.0m of this being paid in cash on closing and a further $1.0m six months post-closing.

The remaining $2.5m will be settled through the issuance Raketech shares with a 36-month lock-up period.

Raketech will now integrate all of ATS Consultants’ assets and liabilities, including websites Winnersandwhiners.com, Statsalt.com and Pickpapa.com, together with the tipster’s roster of employees.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

The regulator said the failings may have been caused by a prioritisation of profit over compliance.

“The reasons for these failings are almost as concerning as the failings themselves,” it said. “Our casework reveals that operators are either not making suitable resources available or are simply putting commercial objectives ahead of regulatory ones. This is simply unacceptable and will be seen as such by others in the industry who work hard to achieve compliance.”

The report cited a lack of due diligence as a major contributing factor to any failures regarding AML and CFT in particular.

This included having inadequate due diligence measures in place to begin with, failure to apply due diligence to circumstances where it should apply, and an over-reliance on third parties to carry out due diligence checks.

In addition, many operators’ thresholds for checks were too high and were based on single metrics rather than a more holistic picture.

Many operators were also shown to have “inadequate risk assessment methodology” in place for money laundering and terrorist financing, while also failing to consider how problem gambling could be linked to money laundering and terrorist financing.

The Commission cited a number of cases over the past year that involved inadequete checks, including when it fined Casumo £6m back in March after a player was allowed to lose £1.1m without a responsible gambling interaction.

Other examples were also used as case studies to show how AML practices were being overlooked.

These included a customer depositing £20,000 in cash on two separate occasions while providing false identification, another customer attempting to present sealed cash packets at one casino while lying that it came from another operator, and a member of an organised crime gang using money from cyber crimes in a high-end casino.

The report also expressed concern that operators were more worried about failures to comply with social responsibility guidelines coming across negatively in the press, when their primary concern should have been mitigating money laundering and terrorist financing risks in the first place.

The report reminded licensees that they are expected to comply fully with the terms of their licence “as relevant to anti-money laundering (AML) and counter terrorist financing (CTF)”. Casino licencees must additionally comply with the requirements of the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017, including amendments made by government in 2020 and 2021.

The regulator said: “The Commission is continuing to see repeated examples of operators failing to undertake review of their risk assessments which take into account the Commission’s emerging risk publications. We continue to see insufficient due diligence checks which increases the risk of accepting illicit funds (including the proceeds of crime and terrorist financing).

The Commission agreed regulatory settlements with four brick-and-mortar casinos – and fined another – earlier this year after discovering social responsibility and anti-money laundering failings at each venue.

This represented a 93.5% increase from $434.4m in October of last year and surpassed the previous monthly record of $627.6m set in March this year by 33.9%.

The October total was also 42.0% higher than the $591.8m spent by players in September this year.

The Illinois Gaming Board said online bets accounted for $803.0m of all wagers placed during the month, with retail sportsbooks processing the remaining $36.9m.

Consumers spent £712.6m betting on professional sports in October, as well as $127.4m on college sports events.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

House Bill 29 passed by a margin of 72 votes to 13 after both chambers held a conference to discuss the bill.

The original version of the bill, alongside its Senate equivalent, Senate Bill 176, was first introduced in May. It was passed to Ohio’s finance committee before being approved by the Ohio Senate Gaming Committee in June. 

The original bill permitted up to 20 land-based and 20 online sports betting licenses to be issued, however the latest amendment has allowed the state to issue more licenses beyond that limit if there are enough satisfactory applicants. Other changes include reduced fees for retail licenses.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

The new rules require that all operators must provide certain data for research purposes, in order to enhance the understanding of harmful gambling.

“In practice, research institutions and the persons employed or associated with them who conduct research into gambling addiction do not always easily obtain the required research data,” it said. “To facilitate this, the law provides that all online license holders are obliged, subject to conditions, to make anonymous data available to research institutions on request for research into gambling addiction.”

It makes clear that licensees must “systematically register and analyse data” related to player behaviour, and make an anonymised version of this data available to research institutions if requested.

Data that should be provided should include “internal and external signals pointing to excessive participation in licensed games of chance or risks of gambling addiction”, “interventions and the player’s response to them”, login frequency, frequency of play, player age if they are under 24 and transaction history.

“This data is important for scientific research and the development of new scientific insights into problematic gaming behaviour, and the development of intervention methods tailored to the player to prevent the development from recreational to problematic gaming behavior as much as possible,” the law says.

In addition, the institution performing the research must inform both the Executive Board and the relevant license holder(s) of the publication of the research.

The research law accompanies the Dutch Remote Gambling Act, which came into effect on 1 April.

the Dutch online gambling market opened on 1 October this year, but immediately faced another interruption when its self-exclusion system, Cruks, experienced a technical fault. The market then officially opened on 5 October.

A number of operators have opted to block Dutch customers until they receive an online gaming licence from the KSA, after the Dutch government announced a change in enforcement policy. These include Kindred, which said it will block Dutch customers until it receives a licence, which it expects to be in Q2 2022, and Entain, which expects to submit a licence application by the end of 2021.

Other operators to do so include Betsson and LeoVegas.

Earlier today (9 December), regulator de Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) has sanctioned a licensed operator that had placed an ad the KSA said was “misleading”, as it was not clearly labelled as gambling marketing.

The program will launch today (9 December) and run through to 24 February 2022, with up to 4,694,532 nominal shares to be bought at a price of €0.01 each.

The purchase of shares will be limited to a market value of €10.0m, with the acquisition of shares to take place on Nasdaq Stockholm in compliance with the Nordic Main Market Rulebook for Issuers of shares.

Nordea will act as lead manager of the buyback program and purchase shares on behalf of Better Collective, making trading decisions independently of, and without influence by the affiliate.

“The purpose of the program is to partially cover the company’s debt obligations related to completed acquisitions, and to cover/hedge future obligations related to established incentive programs,” Better Collective said.

Better Collective has completed a series of acquisitions in recent months, including last month taking full control of US-based RotoGrinders Network, purchasing the remaining 40% stake in RotoGrinders for a total price of €33.0m.

In September this year, Better Collective also acquired Dutch online sports media brands Soccernews.nl and Voetbalwedden.net as part of an effort to build its presence in the Netherlands.