Category: Announcement

Nippon Partners with Nintendo for Splatoon 2 Esports Leagues

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Nowadays, news of domestic sports competitions venturing into Esports is becoming more and more common. A number of famous teams, leagues, and clubs from all around the world have finally decided to warm up to the idea of acquiring or starting competitive video game teams not only because it is an assured source of some extra revenue but also because it will hopefully broaden their reach.

Japan has not been left behind. The country’ pro baseball league, Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), last week announced that they had made a move into the Esports industry by partnering with Nintendo to create a new Splatoon 2 Esports league. Each of the league’s 12 clubs will be participating in the Esports league which is set to go down in Spring 2019.

To take part in the Splatoon 2 league, players will need to register for the fourth annual Splatoon Koshien event that was scheduled to kick off in July 2018. During the event, a scout from each of the 12 clubs will be around to pick team members based on their own criteria. Players who are selected will be contacted by the team for a special interview scheduled for February 2019 after which all of the 12 teams will be shown off at a special presentation in March before the Splatoon officially kicks off.

At the moment, the league’s official start date has not been announced and, on the same note, no details regarding the ruleset or the prize pool have been released. However, it is worth noting that the language on the official Splatoon Esports Series website seems to suggest that the pool will not have a prize, even though the players are likely to receive compensation for their participation. This is expected especially when considering Nintendo’s operating procedure, that is, the company does not award monetary prizes for tournaments.

Nippon’s Partnership with Konami

The Splatoon 2 Esports league is not NPB’s first Esports venture. In 2017, the baseball league partnered with Konami to host championships for its official baseball title Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū which is known internationally as Power Pros. This tournament was officially recognized by the league and, furthermore, featured promotional content that involved a number of NPB stars.

Last week, NPB announced that it plans to take its relationship with Konami a notch higher with the launch of Pawapuro Pro League, a baseball Esports League that will operate in the same way as the NBA 2K league – each of the NPB clubs will be represented by three players. This one, on the other hand, will have a prize pool of 12 million yen ($12,000).

Nasdaq Holds Closed-Door Meeting with Crypto and Fiat Firms

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Despite their obvious growth in popularity and real-world applications, cryptocurrencies have been lingering in the regulatory grey zone mostly because international regulatory bodies hold mixed opinions on the development of the rapidly growing industry as well the asset class. It would seem that the reputation of the entire cryptocurrency industry has been hopelessly tainted by issues pertaining to fraud and shady transactions, but everything is about to change for the better.

With a number of emerging regulation and institutional solutions, Wall Street is beginning to slowly warm up to the idea of cryptocurrencies as a legitimate digital asset class. One of the organizations championing the legitimization of crypto is Nasdaq who on July 27, 2018, held a closed-door meeting in Chicago with the heads of various cryptocurrency-based companies and other financial institutions to discuss the future of the sector.

Bloomberg reports that the agenda of the meeting was the examination of ways of enhancing the overall outlook of the crypto-business and exhibiting its potential to the rest of the world. They also, reportedly, discussed some of the actions that crypto-based companies must do in order to improve the reputation of bitcoin and other digital currencies

Nasdaq Is Optimistic About a Digital Economy

Nasdaq has already adopted an industry-forward stance as far as crypto is concerned – its CEO, Adena Friedman is already at the helm of a number initiatives designed to help cryptocurrency exchanges advance their security systems. Security will naturally be a key determinant of whether crypto is finally ready to take the next step forward towards legitimization.

The company also partnered with Winklevoss twins-owned Gemini, a digital asset exchange to monitor Ether and bitcoin trading using Nasdaq’s SMARTS Market Surveillance systems. This was followed by an announcement that was made earlier this week disclosing that Nasdaq is going to be supplying five digital currency exchanges with market surveillance technologies.

Adena Friedman, who is at the helm of all these developments, has expressed a lot of optimism towards the development of a digital economy. In a May 7 CNN podcast, she noted that:

“How it evolves and which of the cryptocurrencies may or may not be the one that ultimately gets embraced, I think that really the jury is still out on that. But I do think the idea of a more globalized payment mechanism that is more efficient than what we have today allows for money to transfer across countries and certainly supports the Internet economy.”

She believes that cryptocurrencies are, without a doubt, the next logical step in the space of currency adding that the underlying blockchain technology will enable among other things more efficient value transfer. In addition to this, she has even said that Nasdaq would be willing to consider operating a cryptocurrency exchange once regulations settle and the crypto sector matures.

Microgaming Launches Brand New(-ish) Online Poker Software

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Microgaming has recently launched its most revitalized online poker product to date. Prima Poker, the brand new poker software, was rolled out to customers on July 26 and is expected to be fully accessible to all of its customers by July 31.

Designed and built with players in mind, Prima Poker offers a streamlined interface that is very easy to navigate regardless of whether you are playing cash, tournament and casino games. It also includes a blind cash game lobby as well as a simplified rewards system.

If you are very enthusiastic about online poker you may have heard of Prima before. It was one of the biggest online poker names thanks to its very popular high-stakes games that put the likes of Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars to shame. Unfortunately, the platform slowly lost its glory and this eventually led to its rebranding to Microgaming Poker Network.

Fresh Look

The online poker client has been revitalized with a strong focus on enhancing user experience while at the same time promoting responsible gaming with increased transparency. To achieve all this, it features a play history tool that shows a player their overall profits and losses across all game types – this can be filtered for any time period giving players the ability to track and review their gameplay and make informed decisions.

“It is an exciting and pivotal time for the Microgaming Poker Network. The launch of Prima marks another move in our strategy to continue developing products centered around giving players the best poker experience with a more intuitive client, optimized for any device,” Jean-Luc Ferriere, CCO of Microgaming commented.

Microgaming further used cross-platform technologies that allowed them to design Prima in a modular fashion. These technologies also offer the same codebase capabilities which means that Microgaming will, therefore, be able to quickly and easily deploy updates of the client across all of its platforms simultaneously. This is very exciting especially because it not only assures players that new and upcoming devices will be supported but also allows for faster penetration into newer markets.

“This is our biggest and most important poker release and the culmination of a multi-year strategy to revitalize our product and leapfrog the competition. I’m proud of what the team has achieved and I’m so excited about what we are going to build together in the coming months,” says Alex Scott, the head of product Microgaming’s Network Games. “By the end of the year, this new Prima client will have significant new features that the old one doesn’t have. At that point, I want to be really pushing it to players over the old one. This is much more in keeping with what you’d expect as a player in 2018.”

FanDuel to Launch Online Casino and Sports Betting in N.J.

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Renowned fantasy sports provider, FanDuel, has recently announced its plans to launch an online casino alongside a sports betting offering in New Jersey. Sources reveal that the company plans to apply its branding to an online casino through its licensing affiliation with the Golden Nugget Casino in Atlantic City. On the same not, FanDuel will be providing online sports betting under the license of the Meadowlands Racetrack.

The move was rather surprising, especially because both FanDuel and DraftKings, its competitor, have previously shunned all and any association to gambling and now they are both charging forward into the gambling space with sports betting and online casino ventures.

Rebranding in Progress

FanDuel is owned by Paddy Power Betfair which is one of the largest bookmakers in existence – the European bookmaker acquired FanDuel last week, thus finally closing a deal that was struck in May.

“Today is a milestone for the sports industry. We are excited to share that we closed our previously announced merger agreement with Paddy Power Betfair to combine our US businesses, allowing us to move forward with our promise to provide you, our loyal users, an even better experience,” an e-mail FanDuel wrote for to its customers read.

FanDuel will be serving as the face of Paddy Power Betfair’s United States operations that included sports betting and online gambling platforms. One of its most notable operations is the Betfair online casino in New Jersey.

Apparently, Paddy Power Betfair chose FanDuel because of the latter’s brand and database of players which are certainly key selling points and would, in turn, compliment the plenty of sports betting tech that Paddy Power has at its disposal. In a press release, Paddy confirmed that:

“The transaction strengthens the Group’s opportunity to target the prospective US sports betting market through the addition of a strong brand, large existing customer base, and talented team.”

While Paddy will be using the FanDuel brand in the United States, the bookmaker has been trying to rebrand itself – earlier this month, it announced that its US-facing operations, Betfair US, would be changing its name to FanDuel Group. In fact, this rebranding might even affect the Betfair online casino in New Jersey.

GAN and IGT To Offer Assistance

Paddy Power Betfair is definitely a market leader in other jurisdictions but in the United States, the FanDuel group has already secured its own deals with third-party suppliers. One of these suppliers is IGT which has been tasked with providing the platform that will deliver Paddy Power Betfair’s bookmaking services to FanDuel’s sports books.

FanDuel Group further inherited Paddy Power’s partnerships with Golden Nugget and GAN, the two entities that are at present responsible for the Betfair online casino. GAN will be participating in providing logistics to power the FanDuel online casino and sportsbook operations. This will be done in conjunction with both IGT and Paddy Power Betfair.

MGM Resorts Files Lawsuit Against Las Vegas Shooting Victims

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It has been a little less than a month since MGM Resorts International had issues with its workers over a number of serious concerns. Well, the owner and operator of the Mandalay Bay Resort is back on the spotlight, and it is certainly not for good reason. MGM has filed a lawsuit against hundreds of victims of the mass shooting that was perpetrated by Stephen Paddock at the Las Vegas-based Mandalay Bay Resort and left 58 people dead and countless more injured. According to the lawsuit, the company has “no liability of any kind.”

The lawsuit has ignited a lot of outrage from various places and this forced MGM to release a statement to that clarified that the lawsuit was only meant to provide a “timely resolution”  for the shooting victims who have either already sued the company or will do so in the future. The mains takeaway is, however, the fact that the company also stated that any litigation filed against it “must be dismissed.”

“The unforeseeable events of October 1st affected thousands of people in Las Vegas and throughout North America,” MGM Resorts spokeswoman Debra DeShong said. “From the day of this tragedy, we have focused on the recovery of those impacted by the despicable act of one evil individual.

While we expected the litigation that followed [the attack], we also feel strongly that victims and the community should be able to recover and find resolution in a timely manner… Years of drawn-out litigation and hearings are not in the best interest of victims, the community, and those still healing.”

The Specifics

The MGM Resorts lawsuits that were filed in federal courts in California and Nevada against a good number of the 2,500 victims or related person states that “no MGM Party attempted to commit, knowingly participated in, aided, abetted, committed, or participated in any conspiracy to commit any act of terrorism.”

It is worth noting that the lawsuit is only being filed against parties who either have already filed complaints or are threatening to do so against the entertainment operator for negligence and responsibility for death, injury and emotional distress related to the October 1 massacre. MGM’s lawsuit has named over 800 defendants in California and over 200 in Nevada.

“If Defendants were injured by (the) assault, as they allege, they were inevitably injured both because (the shooter) fired from his window and because they remained in the line of fire at the concert. Such claims inevitably implicate security at the concert — and may result in a loss to CSC,” MGM says.

As expected, the move has not been met well by a number of people including the victims themselves. Some of them even believe that it is a mere stunt by the casino operator and therefore will not survive a court challenge. Let’s wait and see how this goes.

Overwatch League Coming to ESPN, Disney and ABC

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On Wednesday, Blizzard Entertainment announced that it had struck a multi-year broadcast with ESPN, Dinsey and ABC family networks. The broadcast deal includes the Overwatch League playoffs which kicked off on the night of the announced, the Season 1 grand finals that will be played at the Barclays Center in New York later this month as well as the next year’s Overwatch League Season 2.

The coverage began on Wednesday with the playoffs on ESPN3 and Disney XD. This will be followed by 10 hours of the Grand Finals coverage which will also include a July 29 recap show on ABC.

“We are turning the corner here in terms of our interest and engagement in the Esports category,” said ESPN’s Vice President of Digital Media Programming, John Lasker. “We’ve had an interest and have been watching pretty closely how the first year of the Overwatch League has been progressing, and we’re really excited to be a part of this. Clearly, by the way, we’re going to be covering it starting with the playoffs and the finals this year certainly speaks volumes to our excitement and our enthusiasm overall for Esports moving forward.”

Even though the financial terms of the partnership are yet to be revealed, it is quite obvious that this is a huge step forward for the Overwatch League and the Esports industry as a whole. Also, existing distribution agreements such as Twitch broadcasts will remain and this combined with what the Disney and ESPN networks have to offer at both the linear and digital level, Esports are headed nowhere but up.

Is This It?

The Esports industry has been around for a very long time but is undeniable that the era of live streaming is one of its key propellants. Case in point, Twitch has grown and evolved to become the go-to streaming service for competitive video games such as Dota 2, League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Now, other players like Facebook are carving out their own offerings with regards to the Esports streaming.

Online streaming has done a great job for Esports and it will probably remain to be a leader in that regard but the very idea of an Esports tournament championship airing live in primetime on ESPN is very exciting, to say the least. The partnership is, by all means, a well-structured strategy to bring Overwatch to a much larger audience. This brings about a crossover of sorts but the defining factor is that each distribution point is representative of different demographics with a common interest – watching the highest levels of the Overwatch League gameplay.

“It’s a cross-section that’s a hardcore sports fan, especially on ESPN channels,” Pete Vlastelica, president, and CEO of Activision Blizzard Esports leagues said. “They love watching competition, they love watching the best in the world compete at a great game. Maybe they have played video games. Maybe they know of Overwatch. Maybe they even play Overwatch or play it a lot. But they’re fundamentally looking to be entertained by the highest possible level of competition around a great game. And that’s what we’ve got.”

This could have just the right amount of momentum to propel Esports towards mainstream media and mass global adoption.

First All-Crypto Poker Tournament Headed for Atlantic City

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Atlantic City has been a haven for a number of big events in the past few months and it is about to get even better. The next big event will be the Blockchain World Conference (BWC) which will is scheduled for Harrah’s Resort between July 11 and July 13, but this is certainly not the biggest highlight of the event. The BWC also announced that it will be concluding the three-day conference with a bang by hosting the very first casino sanctioned all-crypto poker tournament.

The Blockchain World Conference is an event where blockchain and crypto experts meet to discuss the latest developments in the sector. Already, this year’s event is expected to be largest blockchain event in history with attendees ranging from celebrities to startups, ICOs, entrepreneurs, social media influencers, accredited investors, exchange facilitators, and developers. While these are certainly interesting aspects of the conference the crypto-poker tournament has been stealing the show ever since it was announced.

The 100-player event scheduled for July 14 will start at 11.00 AM is being hosted in conjunction with Blockparty, a blockchain-powered live event ticketing platform – the platform will be used by interested participants to buy-into games, betting as well as cashing out in digital currencies.

“What better way to end a three-day conference in Atlantic City than the world’s first crypto poker tournament? After three days of discussions about blockchain and cryptocurrency, this is a fun and unique way to bring our event to a close– highlighting a compelling real-world application of this technology, in true Atlantic City fashion. The Blockparty team are incredible leaders in blockchain-based live event ticketing and they were the perfect partners for us to work with for an event of this caliber,” Alex Falcone, the Blockchain World Conference COO said.

To guarantee a seat at the all-crypto poker tournament, the interested individuals must already be attendees of the Blockchain World Conference. They will also need to pay a $250 buy-in in cryptocurrency on Blockparty’s ticketing platform.

“As one of the first true real-world applications of blockchain and cryptocurrency, we’re excited to add another event category, like poker, to our ticketing repertoire. It’s a great testament to what we’ve built that the mainstream music scene and crypto enthusiasts alike are recognizing the ease and convenience of our platform and this is a great taste of what the future holds as mainstream adoption of blockchain only continues,” Blockparty CEO, Shiv Madan commented on the company’s partnership with BWC for the tournament.

The winner of the all crypto poker tournament will receive two VIP to the BWC South that is scheduled to take place in Hollywood, Florida, between December 3 and December 5. In addition to this, the winner will also be awarded a three-night stay at the Diplomat Beach Resort as well as a $10,000 cash prize. Blockparty has also promised to award any player that manages to knock out a pro, in addition to the competition it will be holding in order to find 10 people whose buy-in for the crypto poker tournament they will pay.

Atlantic City’s Hard Rock Casino Starts Online Gambling Site

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Atlantic City’s Hard Rock Casino and Ocean Resorts Casino went live last Thursday in some of the biggest grand openings in a very long time. This takes New Jersey’s thriving gaming market to a whole new level and it is even about to get better.

Atlantic City’s Hard Rock casino on Tuesday afternoon quietly rolled out its online gambling operation just five days after its highly anticipated land-based casino opened its doors to patrons. Reportedly, this will not be the last time we are hearing of the launch of online gambling operations in the city – Ocean Resort Casino is apparently also preparing itself to offer online gambling to the New Jersey market.

According to the director of the state Division of Gaming Enforcement, David Rebuck, Hard Rock’s equipment and systems all passed the necessary tests and were thus cleared for operations. The operator’s online gambling site is now the 26th operational legal gambling site in the state. As for Ocean Resorts Casino’s supposed online offering, Rebuck confirmed that it is still in its testing phases with the New Jersey gambling regulators.

“Our online gaming team has done an amazing job launching one of the most dynamic online gaming experiences in the industry,” said Hard Rock’s Atlantic City president, Matt Harkness. “We’re excited to extend the Hard Rock brand beyond the Boardwalk and let casino players (play) across the Garden State.”

Hard Rock joins six other online casino gambling licensees including Resorts, Tropicana, Caesars interactive-NJ, Borgata and Golden Nugget. The state’s new gambling regulator also approved a number of companies that partner with the Atlantic City casinos.

New Jersey’s internet gambling begun officially in 2013 and has grown steadily since then into a very huge revenue source for both the state and the operators. In 2017, internet gambling brought in a whopping $245 million for Atlantic City casinos – this translates to about 10 percent of their total revenue.

Things are certainly looking up in this regard especially considering the fact that sports betting which kicked off in New Jersey last month will also be in the mix. This will without a doubt take the state through a quick period of recovery as these two new revenue sources – online gambling and sports betting – were lacking during the two-year period within which five of Atlantic City’s 12 casinos shut down. Already, two of them, that is, Hard Rock and Ocean Resorts casino, have been reopened and this proves that the state is indeed about to regain its former glory.

Indian Supreme Court Upholds RBI’s Cryptocurrency Ban

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On April 5, India’ central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued a circular that was addressed to all regulated financial institutions including banks prohibiting them from offering their services to crypto-related business. The policy further mandated the financial institutions to stop allowing their own retail clients from purchasing cryptocurrencies through their banking accounts. A three-month deadline was set for the policy and therefore the ban should effectively take effect as from Thursday, July 5.

As expected, the move by the RBI to ban cryptocurrencies has caused quite a stir across India’s nascent but rapidly growing cryptocurrency community with a number of crypto exchanges opting to take up the issue through the courts. The Supreme Court just happens to be one of the many courts where petitions challenging the ban were filed – most of the petitions cited the RBI’s policies as being “arbitrary, unfair and unconstitutional.”

The move was led by the Internet and Mobile Association of India which counts cryptocurrency exchanges as its members. The organization fast-tracked the legal challenge against the RBI ban and they finally got to be heard on the morning of June 3.

Unfortunately, the Indian Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra chose to side with the arguments of the RBI and therefore the cryptocurrency ban is still in effect and so is the July 5 deadline.

“This a win for the RBI and a big blow to virtual currency exchanges and traders. In our earlier request to the RBI as well, we had asked it to extend the deadline by a month after the July 20 hearing. However, now that the ban will continue, the banking route for the exchanges and its users will be completely choked,” said Rashmi Deshpande, an associate from legal firm Khaitan & Co who are involved in the petition.

Is This the End for Crypto Exchanges in India?

If you have been following the crypto industry in India, you may have noticed that it is quite likely that this might truly be the end of cryptocurrency exchanges in the country. There is all talk of total control of crypto being eventually handed to the RBI, something that, if goes through, will lead to the digital currencies being declared as completely illegal assets.

Furthermore, some top government officials have hinted at a number of regulatory or legal developments that are currently in the works and have the potential of turning everything around.

“We have prepared a draft (on virtual currencies) that entails what parts of this businesses should be banned and what should be preserved. This should be discussed by the first week of July and we should wrap this up within in the first fortnight of July,” Subnash Chandra Garg, the Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs said.

While we cannot be certain about what the future truly holds for crypto, the Supreme Court’s decision is most certainly bad news for the Indian crypto market especially considering how deep-rooted blockchain technology is in India.

Resorts Casino Partners with SBTech for Sports Betting

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As sports betting in New Jersey and the United States as a whole continues to pick up steam, Resorts Atlantic City has been busy adding a number of partners to support its bid to offer services to the sports betting market. Just a little over a month after landing a sportsbook partnership with renowned daily fantasy sports provider DraftKings, it was announced that Resorts on Monday, July 2 had inked a deal with SBTech, an industry-leading sports betting solutions provider for the regulated online gaming industry.

The deal will see SBTech “provide its sportsbook solution across on-property, online and mobile channels” in New Jersey. It also marks the second partnership agreement that SBTech has gotten into since the United States Supreme Court ruled to repeal the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in May. The first partnership deal was with Churchill Downs – both deals are quite similar since both casinos will be leveraging the SBTech platform for their full omnichannel offering across all channels. There will be a lot of focus on on-property solutions that will hopefully provide a land-based solution for the future.

Resorts, through the partnership, will now be able to launch a fully-integrated omnichannel sports betting solution with an emphasis on mobile-friendly features like bet builder solution Your Bet or SBTech’s live betting innovation Pulse Bet.

In addition to this, Resorts will also be outsourcing its risk management and trading SBTech – SBTech will implement a bespoke risk management strategy that will be enabled by proprietary trading operations. This will, in turn, allow Resorts Casino to achieve genuine differentiation and at the same time achieve control of its liabilities will avoiding the influence of the wider pool-based risk management.

“After conducting a comprehensive selection process to find the right sports betting supplier, we feel that SBTech offers the right combination of deep regulatory expertise in the world’s most dynamic and demanding markets and the scalability to support our ambitious multi-vertical plans,” Resorts Casino Hotel president and chief executive, Mark Giannantonio said.

Partnering with SBTech is going to be great for Resorts Casino not just because the solutions provider provides players with uninterrupted access to sports and casino products from a wide range of devices but also because SBTech has superbly flexible gaming solutions. Resorts will benefit immensely from the exceptional configurability of the SBTech platform that is further supported by the very best business intelligence and reporting capabilities.

“Our strategic partnership with Resorts represents the next stage of our long-planned penetration of the US market. SBTech’s renowned commitment to delivering leading-edge solutions across all channels and intelligent responsible gaming infrastructure will help us develop a sports betting offering that will benefit our partners and promote best practice and the strongest levels of consumer protection,” SBTech CEO, Richard Carter stated during the Monday announcement.