Category: Gambling

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.

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.

Leagues Push for a Cut of Sportsbetting Revenue May Deter It

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While sports betting in all other parts of the United States outside the state of Nevada is on the verge of being legalized, there are a couple of new developments that are likely to affect the process in a rather negative way.

According to Twitter’s vice president of Analytics, Jeff Ma, even as the major sports leagues like the National Football League and the National Basketball Association become aware of the multibillion-dollar opportunity that sports betting offers, their approach towards getting a piece of the will end up impeding the ability to lead gamblers away from illegal betting and offshore operators. Ma also said that the NBA, in particular, has proven to be “short-sighted” by requesting a 1 percent cut on all the bets placed on its games.

If you are unfamiliar with Jeff Ma you might be wondering what a Twitter VP has to do with online sports betting. Well, Ma was once one of the leaders of the infamous MIT blackjack team which inspired the movie 21 and a book titled Bringing Down the House. He is a renowned expert in the gambling industry and has an incredible understanding of how the professional sports leagues work or operate – he even once served as a consultant for the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers and the NFL’s Francisco 49ers.

“Traditionally, a lot of the leagues are run by lawyers so they think about how do we protect our assets, they don’t think about how do we monetize our assets,” Ma said in an interview with CNBC during the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. “In this case, they are thinking protect and charge people money instead of focusing on the bigger opportunity down the road.”

In Ma’s opinion, a partnership between the professional sports leagues and the sports betting operators will definitely be a better alternative especially at the earlier stages of the industry’s growth after the ban on sports betting is lifted. He also pointed out that while the flat fee off the top that the leagues are advocating for could certainly be feasible in the long run, the market will need to grow significantly before that.

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.

Stars Group Expands Sports Betting Business with CrownBet

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The Stars Group, PokerStars’ parent company is expanding their sports betting business with the recent purchase of 62 percent of the CrownBet Holdings Pty Limited for about $117.7 million. As per the terms of the sale, CrownBet founder and CEO, Rowen Bruce Craigie, now owns 38 percent of the company and will continue to operate the business. Currently, CrownBet is one of the most popular online sports betting operators in Australia.

CrownBet’s revenues rose from AUS$76.5 million in 2015 to AUS$2014 million (which is approximately $158.9 million) in 2017. Furthermore, unaudited EBITDA for last year came in at approximately AUS$7.9 million which is equivalent to $6.15 million.

“We are excited to enter the regulated Australian sportsbook market with CrownBet. CrownBet has become one of the fastest growing online sportsbooks in Australia through its strong management team, proprietary technology, mobile app, unique partnerships and market-leading loyalty program,” said Stars Group CEO, Rafi Ashkenazi.

CrownBet still owns the Betfair branded betting exchange business which means that it has not yet exited this particular facet of the market. CrownBet’s primary business revolves around the Crown Casinos that are based in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. The revenues from their online effort are still relatively smaller than what the casinos rake in but this should improve with under the new part-ownership with the Stars Group.

More to Come from Stars

At the moment, the Stars Group has already moved to recruit new sports bettors from its significantly huge online poker face. The company has been making use of cross-selling in order to maximize the amounts it rakes in from each and every one of its constituent businesses.

For instance, it is currently running a “Big Race” promotion that combines action with a race-themed poker tournament which is scheduled for March 4, followed by a Cheltenham Gold Cup horse race promotion set for March 16th.

Since CrownBet will be joining the Stars Group family of brands, a number of similar marketing efforts will be directed towards it so as to increase the range of services that the Australian market will receive from CrownBet.

Ellen DeGeneres Has Been Hosting High-Stakes Poker Games

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Turns out, Ellen DeGeneres is a poker freak. The talk show regularly hosts high-stakes poker games at the California home where she stays with wife Portia De Rossi, but only Hollywood’s top names are invited to play.

Wait, is it legal? Well, of course, the games are completely legal in California. Reportedly, Ellen’s poker games are pretty huge, sometimes racking up pots worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, the poker games have drawn so much attention since they show Ellen’s life outside her famous TV show – this is likened to her dark side.

According to Radar Online, the comedienne has a tendency of not holding anything back during the games – some of the participants of her poker games have described her as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of sorts with poker being her medicine of choice. A recent invitee gave an account of how she was not able to keep up with the game and this earned her Ellen’s wrath and rage for supposedly ‘ruining the game.’ This frightened the guest and caused her so much grief that she eventually decided to fold her cards and get away from Ellen’s $18.6 million oceanfront property.

The invitee, whose identity remains undisclosed said that “The energy around the table was very tense. Ellen threw a tantrum, and her screams echoed through the halls as frightened guests looked on in sheer disbelief!”

Is Too Unbelievable?

Obviously, this is definitely not the image that DeGeneres has been portraying on TV ever since she began her stand-up comedy routines in the late 70s. It was about the same time that Ellen made an appearance on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1986. Since then, Ellen has appeared in a number of films including the massively successful Finding Nemo and Finding Dory animated film. She also starred in a self-titled show, Ellen, for 1994 to 1998 before jumping on to her talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2003. Her Show has earned her 29 Daytime Emmy Awards alongside a Primetime Emmy Awards, two Grammy Award nominations as well as three more Golden Globes nominations.

Chelsea Handler, Melissa Etheridge, and Olivia Munn are some of the few Hollywood bigwigs who have been courageous enough to risk their pride by going against Ellen. All the attendees describe the games as tense and dark especially because they had to be careful not to step on the hosts, toes. Sometimes, she even throws objects in the room if things do not go her way.

Second Annual Live Gaming Summit: What to Look Forward To

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Since its rather humble pioneering start over a decade ago, live casino gaming has grown to be a vital component of the online gambling industry – the revenue statistics are proof of this. In fact, according to data provided by H2 Gambling Capital, by 2014 over 60 percent of the European Union’s regulated market’s Gross Gaming Revenue was generated by live online gaming. This already impressive revenue stream is expected to increase by 50 percent by 2020.

Owing to these outstanding financial statistics mentioned above as well as the tremendous market developments in the recent past, the Live Gaming Summit was conceptualized so as to bring together operators, providers, experts and many other stakeholders in the gambling community. This year on April 26th, the second ever annual Live Gaming Summit, is set to be held in Barcelona and will extend beyond discussions on online gambling to other key components of the gambling industry such as TV betting fantasy sports and land-based among many others.

It Is Getting Bigger

Many of the operators and suppliers who attended the recent ICE Totally Gaming Conference showed a great deal of interest in 2018’s Live Gaming Summit. Last year, close to a hundred visiting parties from over fourteen countries participated in the maiden edition of the annual Live Gaming Summit and they got to enjoy a number of sterling presentations as a well as an all-night networking opportunity.

As it stands, participating speakers from Ezugi, Evolution Gaming, Mr. Green, Unibet, and LeoVegas have already confirmed their attendance. With the diversity that the summit is promising this year, the summit has confirmed the attendance of representative from a number of AR and VR suppliers, fantasy sports providers, TV betting companies as well land-based casinos. Also confirmed to be attending are a decent selection of sponsors and media partners even though they are yet to be officially announced.

This year’s annual Live Gaming Summit will be hosted at the elegant Casino Barcelona which will still be running live action of its blackjack and roulette games. so, there is really so much more to look forward to.

Zeroedge Is Offering Esports Betting With Zero Commission

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The past few years have seen online sports betting grow tremendously which has eventually led it to its current state of being the leading form of online gambling in many parts of the world. Esports, a rather new and interesting niche in the world online sports betting, has also been increasing in popularity over the past decade and sooner than later it might be just as mainstream as the other sports leagues – it is already a close competitor to the leagues.

The Rise of Crypto Casinos

Cryptocurrencies have undoubtedly grown on nearly everyone in the online gambling space. However, Esports betting at emerging or established online crypto-powered casinos may not be already as polished as gamblers may desire but in most cases, the pickings are just slim – this is because not many of them are dedicated Esports betting operations.

Zeroedge online casino offers the solution to this problem with its cryptocurrency-based operation that also includes the casino’s own in-house unique cryptocurrency known as ZeroCoin. Zeroedge is one of the few online casinos that are exclusively offering Esports betting opportunities to bettors. To sweeten the deal, the casino further offers an unheard of and an unprecedented zero commission for all the games offered on the site.

Why Is Zeroedge Such a Big Deal?

Well, it is essentially the world’s first online casino that offers two unique advantages to the general online gambling community – the first being the fact that it runs exclusively on a cryptocurrency (ZeroCoin) and the second being that it will be offering a true zero percent house edge to its players. Most casinos usually stack the odds in their favor which makes it very difficult for players to win. Zeroedge, on the other and, does not profit from the losses that its customers incur and instead it benefits from the increased value of ZeroCoin, which is apparently Zero Edge Casino networks’ main economy driver.

Being that the casino offers zero percent edge on casino games, there has been an increase in demand for ZeroCoin which in turn has resulted in an increase in its value. Players are still able to play zero percent games as the price of ZeroCoin rises and they are also not required to pay any fixed amount of money in order to place bets. To achieve this sort of “free” gaming, players are subjected to a closed loop economy where the only requirement is that they buy the casino’s token with fiat currencies or other cryptocurrencies and since the supply of ZeroCoin is limited, its value is directly proportional t demand.

This is further facilitated by Blockchain & Smart contract technology which allow for the creation of a fully transparent and truly fair gambling ecosystem where players not only have more opportunities to participate but they are also offered true chances of winning while at the same time being part of a much larger community where social inclusion and mutual values are fostered.