Category: Announcement

Two More Major Esports Player Associations Are in the Works

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Esports just keeps getting better and better in almost every way possible with the most recent development being the move to put together player associations to cater for professional video gamers who play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Overwatch. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s association will include players in the FACEIT ECS as well as the ESL Pro. It is led by attorney Michael Doi and Esports broadcaster Scott “SirScoots” Smith.

In an interview with Sports Business Journal, Scott Smith said that the Counter-Strike Professional Players Association (CSPPA) will not be looking to establish itself as a United States Union simply because Counter-Strike players originate from many different parts of the world. However, the association will be working towards signing all of the 255 professional players.

“Every day I sign another guy,” he said. “I would say 70 or so have signed an official membership document that they are for the players association, are behind the players association, they want to be in the players association.”

There has not been any official news regarding the Overwatch players association but the officials have confirmed that formal details on the same will be availed in around four months. The Overwatch player association efforts are being led by former player and Overwatch coach Thomas “Morte” Kerbusch and sports labour attorney Ellen Zavian. It is reported that the Overwatch association is likely to be modelled after existing U.S. unions like the National Football League (NFL) Players Association.

“I don’t see this [players association] as any different than any other PA just because it’s eSports,” Zavian said. “So this isn’t something that will be a lighthearted step. This will be a big step.”

If the two associations are formed successfully they will be joining the Riot Games’ League of Legends players association that is ran by Hal Biagas. Esports player associations are still in the very first stages of development but many agree that it is certainly a logical step for competitive video gaming as it draws nearer to being a mainstream activity, just like traditional professional sports.

Nevada’s Anti-Online Poker AG Running for Governor

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Nevada’s Attorney General Adama Laxal on Tuesday announced via his Twitter account that he had officially filed the necessary paperwork to run for the state’s Governor this fall. This particular move has caught the eye of the gambling community, especially poker enthusiasts since the lawmaker is extremely against online poker and he has been very vocal about it.

Laxalt’ stance with regard to online poker became known towards the end of 2015 when he confirmed that he would be signing a letter with some other state Attorney Generals in support of Sheldon Adelson’s Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA) bill. Sheldon Adelson, the CEO of the renowned Las Vegas Sands Corp., is known for being a Republican donor and his passionate campaign towards having online gambling completely outlawed in the United States. This is despite the fact that online gambling is now legal in four states, a number that is likely to increase soon, and that a number of Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s competitors like Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts are backing online gaming.

The aspiring Governor reiterated his position in 2016 in a letter addressed to the then newly-elected Donald Trump Administration. In the letter, Laxalt, along with nine other state Attorney Generals asked for online poker to be banned. However, unfortunately for them, President Donald Trump, who happens to be a former casino owner and operator took a neutral stance in this case.

Furthermore, the online gambling ban at the federal level is rather unlikely owing to the vast bipartisan opposition. In fact, a decent number of stakeholders and interested parties have pointed out that a ban of such kind will violate states’ rights. Laxalt, who allegedly has other controversial ties to Adelson, has been strongly rebuked by fellow Republican, Sandoval, over this.

“I am very concerned that anyone representing the state’s legal interests would speak out against current state law in our leading industry,” Sandoval said. “At its core, this is a state’s rights issue and I disagree with the Attorney General that a federal government one-size-fits-all solution is in the best interest of Nevada.”

Sandoval is the former state regulator that signed Nevada’s online poker legislation. He also brokered the online poker liquidity sharing deals with Delaware and New Jersey. Both of these actions were an effort towards growing or nurturing the regulated online poker market.

Dafabet Closes UK-Facing Online Casino amid Regulatory Heat

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Renowned online gambling operator Dafabet has recently announced that it will be exiting the United Kingdom’s online gambling market, a move that is speculated to have been triggered by the ongoing regulatory pressure within that particular field.

Dafabet’s United Kingdom-facing online casino stopped accepting deposits from its customers last week on March 8. The players now have up to Tuesday, March 20, to withdraw their funds from the online betting site. Fortunately for the operator’s customers, their player balances will be automatically returned through the deposit methods they used to register if the will not have made withdrawals by the specified withdrawal deadline. Also, sports betting fans have nothing to worry about as Dafabet also assure their users that the sports betting operations will not be affected by the closure of their casino business.

As it stands, Dafabet is the most popular and the biggest brand of Philippine-based AsianBGE, its parent company. Its operation in the United Kingdom is backed by a license from the UK Gambling Commission but this is not the only place it excels at – the operator also sponsors Premier League’s Burnley F.C. Dafabet signed a £2.5-million sponsorship deal with the football club for the 2017-2018 football season which represents a £0.5 million increase from the previous soccer season.

UK’s Prevailing Storm Regulatory Atmosphere

The UK Gambling Commission recently discovered multiple violations by a number of its licensees and now, in conjunction with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), it has begun a regulatory crackdown that targets the erring operators as well as their affiliate partners.

The nature of the violations that the UK Gambling Commission range from breaches of advertising codes to inadequate anti-money laundering controls among a few others. The CMA has taken action with the most recent being in the form of a written warning that was addressed to a number of online gambling operators. The writing specifically pointed out the terms and practices that the operators have put in place to obstruct their customers from accessing their funds. These included the unreasonably low withdrawal limits, the short deadlines for players to verify their identities in order to be allowed to withdraw their funds as well as the so-called “dormancy” terms that allow the operators to confiscate customer funds after a given period of time when the customer accounts have had no activity.

The UK Gambling Commission will be working with other regulators in changing the rules and ensuring that both new and existing operators are probed more stringently to ascertain that they truly are capable of fully complying with all the laid out regulatory laws, terms and conditions.

MARVEL’s Heather Antos Leaves for Editor-in-Chief Role

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Marvel Comics’ assistant editor Heather Antos is leaving the comic book publisher to become the Editor-in-Chief of Esports betting platform Unikrn – the position was previously held by Ryan Jurado, who has now been reassigned to be the betting platform’s Head of Global Content.

Antos, who previously worked as a comic’s editor on Unlawful Good: An Anthology of Crime, produce on a number web series such as Lagged Out and a journalist for sites like Geek Legacy, has been an Assistant Editor at Marvel Comics since 2015. Her work as an editor at Marvel Comics, principally for the Stars Wars and Deadpool franchises saw to the tremendous growth of both lines of comic books which has earned them very strong critical and commercial success over the past couple of years. Also, this made the star editor herself a public face for Marvel Comics both on social platforms as well as every popular comic convention we can think of.

In 2017, Heather Antos also became the focus of online harassment that led to the #MarvelMilkShakes solidarity hashtag from across the comic book industry. Apparently, Antos will be leaving Marvel Comics simply because she has been presented the opportunity of a lifetime at Unikrn, and not because of any issues that may have come up between her and her former employer.

“Plot twist! In today’s chapter of the Heather Antos Chronicles, I’m making a leap from Marvel comics to video games & Esports as editor-in-chief of Unikrn,” Antos tweeted. “It’s been a long-time goal of mine to branch out into the video game & competitive Esports world. To do so under the guidance & leadership of Rahul Sood and Ryan Jurado is something I never would’ve thought possible. I absolutely cannot wait to dig my heels in & get running!”

Antos will be tasked with managing and overseeing all the editorial content, tournament coverage, podcasts as well as video content.

A Little Insight into Unikrn

The Las Vegas, Nevada-based Unikrn is considered to be the world’s best Esports betting platform – its success can be attested by the many offices they have across some of the world’s most popular cities such as Berlin, Germany and Sydney, Australia.

The Esports betting platform primarily offers real money wagering as well as token-based betting on nearly all the available competitive video gaming tournaments from across the world. Unikrn essentially creates betting markets on Esports in a manner that can be likened to the way traditional sports betting is operated. The platform’s users are allowed to bet legally free from any part of the world using Unikrn’s own cryptocurrency that is referred to as Unikoin. Players from the United Kingdom and a few other areas are even allowed to place bets using real money but this number is likely to grow in the near future.

Sands Exits Pennsylvania Casino Market as Online Poker Nears

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Last fall, Pennsylvania legalized online casino despite strong opposition from billionaire casino boss Sheldon Adelson who owns and operates Las Vegas Sands Corp. The company has been operating a casino-resort, Sands Bethlehem, for years now but the establishment is being sold off before the United States Supreme Court delivers a ruling that will bring legal online gambling in the state.

Sands officially announced on Friday that the company had entered into an agreement to sell the Sands Bethlehem casino-resort for a whopping $1.3 billion to a group known as Wind Creek Hospitality which is an affiliate of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians of Alabama. The $1.3 billion itself is not a bad return for Las Vegas Sands Corp., per se, since the property was built for $743 million before it was launched in 2009. Since then, Sands Bethlehem was among the most successful casino businesses in Pennsylvania’s $3 billion-a-year casino gambling market.

As mentioned earlier, since Sheldon’s the company is not really pro-online gambling, the sale is sort of a reaction to the legalization of online poker to Pennsylvania even though it came months after the state made the ruling. However, Sands Bethlehem is not the only gambling establishment that has felt the pinch – a good number of the other Pennsylvanian casinos have been forced to go back to the drawing board and find out how they can compete in the online space.

“Sands Bethlehem has become one of the leading regional entertainment and gaming destinations in the United States and we are extremely proud of the positive contributions the property has made for Bethlehem and eastern Pennsylvania,” Sheldon Adelson said in a statement about the sale.

Sands Bethlehem has maintained a great track record of success in Pennsylvania especially due to its 36-table poker room that is considered to be among the best places in the state. Fortunately for the casino’s customers, the casino’s management has assured players that the sale will not affect its operations and they can continue enjoying everything that the casino-resort has to offer.

New Bill Proposes Legalization of Sports Betting in New York

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On Wednesday, a new bill aimed at legalizing sports betting in New York was introduced thus adding New York to the growing number of states that have been pushing for similar legislation ahead of the landmark decision from the United States Supreme Court regarding the lifting of the nationwide ban of sports betting. So far, this bill appears to be the most serious attempt yet to legalize single-gaming wagering at gambling joints in New York.

The bill, that was introduced by State Senator John Bonacic, who also happens to be the Racing, Gaming and Wagering Committee chairman, seeks to have professional and college sports betting permitted. The bill further proposes that the state will be taking 8.5 percent from the casinos’ gross revenue – this could bring in an estimated $10 million to $30 million to state coffers every year.

However, the legislation remains dependent on how the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on the New Jersey bid to overturn a federal ban on sports betting that is still in effect in all but four states. Bonacic confirmed that New York will be backing New Jersey and the other states since they believe that sports betting in the United States will eventually be legalized.

“New York State has historically been behind the curve in dealing with developments in the gaming world, and it has been to our detriment,” Bonacic said in a statement. “If allowed, sports betting will be a revenue enhancer for education in New York. We have the chance to ensure our sports betting statute is fully developed and addresses the needs of the state and all stakeholders so we can hit the ground running if and when we can authorize and regulate sports betting.”

According to Sen. Bonacic, sports betting could be a great financial boon for the state, especially for education. Bettors in the United States make as much as $200 billion in illegal bets every year according to various statistics.

Crypto Prices Drop Amidst Trader Suspicion of Binance Hack

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The major cryptocurrencies on Wednesday experienced sharp price drops as reports of system errors at Binance, a renowned crypto exchange, got many investors into a bit of a panic. At the same time, digital currency traders also had to digest reports that major United States regulators are demanding for the registration of all cryptocurrency exchanges.

Binance is considered to be one of the biggest exchanges in the world – CoinMarketCap reports that it is one of the top 4 biggest exchanges for the most popular cryptocurrencies in terms of the traded volumes. Prior to the Wednesday crash, a number of users noticed something highly unusual with Viacoin – that is, a huge increase in buy orders for the cryptocurrency after which its market capitalization jumped from $64 million to $159 million in just a few moments. A probe into the matter revealed that there were lots of unauthorized sell orders going around.

“We are investigating reports of some users having issues with their funds. Our team is aware and investigating the issue as we speak,” the Binance team wrote on Reddit. “As of this moment, the only confirmed victims have registered API keys (to use with trading bots or otherwise). There is no evidence of the Binance platform being compromised.”

Binance later announced that it had halted withdrawals so as to look into what the company referred to as “unauthorized market sells.” The company further stated that there was no evidence that the platform had been compromised at the time.

The impact the alleged Binance hack has had on the market is quite significant. 360 Blockchain USA president, Jeff Koyen pointed out the concerns surrounding Binance resulted in the plunge of the prices of bitcoin and several other digital currencies as well.

“All of crypto is getting battered right now, based on fears that Binance was hacked,” Koyen stated.

SEC Crackdown Played a Role

A number of market analysts have also pointed the price drops to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) recent decision to subpoena a number of firms that either deal in cryptocurrencies, or are associated with them. A large number of the subpoenas were specifically sent to companies that are selling digital token through Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).

Zero Edge Is Set to Solve the ‘House Always Wins’ Problem

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With hundreds of online casinos springing up on the web each and every day, online gambling is as popular as ever and it is surging forwards rapidly as well. While their seemingly inexhaustible popularity cannot be disputed, online gambling has one major flaw that is tied directly to how many of the online casinos are operated.

If you are familiar with gambling, then the saying “The house always wins” must have flown by you a few times since it even dates back to the very first land-based casinos in Asia and Europe. This is a popular statement essentially because it is very true.

Zerocoin to the Rescue

“All casino games, whether they are found in traditional brick and mortar establishments or online, have one thing in common – the odds are always stacked against the player. Players might be winning for a short period of time and think that they cracked the code, but in reality, they are just “running hot” and sooner or later the variance will do its job to favour the house” explained ZeroEdge.Bet CEO, Adrian Casey. “Most of the players are unaware of the mathematical principles that make beating the casino virtually impossible. Therefore, our goal at ZeroEdge.Bet will be to educate players about gambling and prevent them from falling victims to its traps.”

Zero Edge Casino uses its own Zerocoin, its own in-house cryptocurrency in a bid to solve the age-old problem of the house always winning. This is going to be achieved by completely getting rid of the “house edge” altogether which essentially means that for the very first time in history, players will have a true and fair shot at winning the online games they play at Zero Edge Casino.

Zero Edge’s concept has already penetrated the European and the Middle East gambling markets and is now on the verge of completely taking the Asian online gambling market by storm. The online casino operator is essentially turning the casino industry on its head through the introduction of this revolutionary new and different way for online casinos to make profits without having to exploit their customers. The model instead focuses on profiting by increasing the value of the operator’s digital assets through wider adoption and utility.

To play at Zero Edge Casino, players must first buy Zerocoins but this is a fairly small price to pay considering the goodness of playing with the zero percent house edge that the online casino offers. As more players learn about this incredible offer, they will certainly buy into it which will increase the demand for Zerocoins and, in turn, exponentially increase the cryptocurrency’s value. Things are indeed looking up for the company, and for the rest of the online gambling community as well.

German FA President Opposes Induction of Esports As Sports

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According to Reinhard Grindel, the President of Germany’s Football Association (DFB), Esports is not a sports activity thus the induction of competitive gaming into the Olympics is bizarrely absurd. This was on Sunday 4th March 2018 when the members of Germany’s social democratic party opened the way for joining the country’s government as a junior partner in a grand coalition under Chancellor Angela Merkel. This new development came with more certainty that Esports could soon be recognized as sports in accordance with guidelines set out by the coalition governments.

As it stands, Esports has amassed over 250 million players from all around the globe which makes for a steadily growing market that currently rakes in more than a billion dollars every year. This is more than what a decent number of traditional Olympic sports federation can manage, even when combined. However, despite the heavy lobbying that was required to have Esports acknowledged as real sports as well as increasing amount of support that it has been amassing, there are many critical opposing voices that are still not convinced. Thus, apparently, the debate about whether Esports should be considered as “real sports” is not even close to coming to an end.

“The biggest competition to kids coming to our sports club is not handball or basketball, but the use of digital equipment. That is absolute impoverishment,” Grindel said, as reported by Reuters. “Sport plays a social function and this happens in the community. With sport, you have direct contact with those you play. Soccer is home to the green turf and has nothing to do with other, computer generated things. For me, Esports is not sports.”

Furthermore, the Grindel pointed out that he his opinion on the increasing amount that children and young adults spent on mobile devices to be “eine absolute Verarmung,” which can roughly be translated to “a total degeneration.”

There are, obviously, underlying interests on both sides of these debates and this makes it more complex than what people think is happening on the surface. Esports is inherently a for-profit industry and this is especially true for the industry players that have been backing it. The people on the opposing side, like Grendel, are also fighting to protect their market shares. Unfortunately, Esports is catching up quite quickly.

In November 2017, the International Olympic Committee would only consider having Esports as a component of the Olympics if Esports did not “infringe on the Olympic values.” This means that Esports games that feature explosions, violence and killing had to be ruled out.

Operators in the Crosshairs as New Austrian Regulations Loom

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The Ministry of Finance in Austria is in the process of scrutinizing the Gambling Act in the country in a bid to introduce some new amendments that will certainly have a huge impact on the country’s local online gambling market. To be more specific, the revised Gambling Act would potentially ban all the foreign gambling operators and even go as far as requesting that the operators to refund the players for all the losses they have accrued at the said casinos for the past 30 or so years.

This Ban Is Not the Solution

Perhaps one of the most notable aspects of the revised Gambling Act is the proposition that the all the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country should ban the IP addresses belonging to all the gambling operators that are currently operating different online gambling business to Austrian gamblers. Just like in Germany, all of these online gambling sites are not sanctioned by the state and it is, therefore, safe to say that they are operating in a grey area. As such, all those that have stopped or are planning to stop marketing their services and products in Austria are to be blocked.

This does not sit well with quite a number of people. Without reading too much into the situation, it is quite clear that the ban will effectively create a monopoly which will favour Casino Austria, which, as it turns out, is the only site that is licensed in Austria – Casino Austria is also partially owned by the Austrian government. Experts and avid followers of the casino industry believe that the move to ban other reputable operators will have negative effects on the industry and ultimately drive the gamblers to unregulated and unlicensed sites.

Even though it is rather obvious that the IP ban will go against the spirit of freedom for service provision in the European Union, the Austrian ministry of finance is hell-bent on seeing it through. This resulted in an idea that the ministry hoped would keep unlicensed foreign operators away and prevent them from trying to find a workaround to bypass the ban.

To be more precise, the ministry proposed that all contracts between players from Austria and unlicensed operators over the past three decades should be considered to be null and void. The operators would, therefore, have to return all player loses since the period stipulated by the proposed plan. Still, the legality and enforceability of this law are still highly questionable, the Austrian Ministry of Finance hopes that the threat alone will serve to keep foreign and unlicensed operators at bay.

There are a number of companies that are already getting ready to fight for their rights using all the legal resources they have. All of these operators have no issue paying their dues but they are not willing to allow the country’s authority take advantage of their power in order to create a monopoly something that even the European Union itself will not accept as well.