Josh Andrews

GVC Holdings, MGM Resorts Forge U.S. Gambling Joint Venture

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MGM Resorts International on Monday, July 30, announced two new partnerships that, according to CEO Jim Murren, will significantly help the company to rise above many other operators and become an industry leader in U.S. sports betting markets other than Las Vegas.

One of the two strategic partnerships is a market access agreement between MGM and Boyd Gaming which is expected to expand the scope of online and mobile gaming in the country. This partnership will offer sports betting, poker and other casino gaming platforms in the areas where either MGM Resorts International or Boyd Gaming operate a land-based casino or possess online licenses.

“Thanks to our partnership with MGM Resorts, Boyd Gaming will have the opportunity to potentially add an online presence in five additional states, positioning us for significant future growth as our respective companies take a leadership role in our industry’s evolution,” Boyd Gaming President and CEO Keith Smith.

Separately, MGM also announced that it had established a 50-50 joint venture with Europe-based GVC Holdings PLC. The venture will see both companies collaborating to establish a sports betting and online gaming platform that will have its headquarters in the United States. To capitalize on the venture, each of the companies will be raising a whopping $100 million.

GVC has made tremendous efforts to nab a share of the U.S. sports betting market and with the country’s Supreme Court having lifted the federal ban on sports betting, there are a ton of new opportunities in the nascent but rapidly growing market.

The joint venture alone will give the company access to 15 states which have around 90 million people. Added to the fact that the joint venture will also give GVC access to all the land-based gambling facilities and online sports betting platforms in the United States, there is certainly bound to be a revolution in the United States gambling scene.

“MGM Resorts is a world-leading entertainment business and the most trusted name in gaming, with the highest quality brands and management, and strong sports connectivity. This combined with GVC’s technology and experience in successfully building online gaming businesses across multiple markets presents a truly exciting opportunity for U.S. players and our respective shareholders. To be able to team up with a partner with such pedigree and knowledge, particularly in the U.S., is a real opportunity for GVC,” Kenneth Alexander, the GVC Holdings. Chief Executive Officer said.

Jim Murren, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of MGM Resorts International also commented on the joint venture saying:

“We are excited to benefit from GVC’s proprietary, best-in-class technology, digital customer acquisition expertise, and experience with adapting to new operating environments. GVC is unusually qualified due to their existing operations in the U.S. Together, we are creating a one-of-a-kind platform that we expect will dominate the U.S. sports betting market.”

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.”

Online Gaming in New Jersey Gets a Lot Easier

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While New Jersey’s online gambling industry is considered to be one of the best, online gamblers in the state have until recently had to cope with one very frustrating and annoying problem. Participating in online gambling in the state has been a nightmare for residents due to the difficulty of paying with credit cards. The situation was quite unfair especially considering the fact that we live in a world where credit cards are considered to be a standard of payment for a vast range of goods and services.

Having started as an attempt to regulate and prevent online gambling fraud in the state grew to become one of the most significant drawbacks to online gambling in the state as the banks were not allowing players to use their credits to deposits funds into their online casino accounts. As such, many gamblers had to jump through several hoops whenever they wanted to participate in the legal and regulated activity to ensure that their payments were not declined.

“At some point (the federal government) wanted to shut down illegal gambling in the U.S.,” explains Mattias Stetz, COO at Rush Street Interactive/playsugarhouse.com. “Banks became very subjective to what transactions they would or wouldn’t approve. However, since the legal and regulated New Jersey online casinos launched, some banks still haven’t changed their controls to reflect the new legal status.”

Even though these precautions proved to be quite helpful in preventing fraud and illegal gambling activities, it also served a pretty significant stumbling block for legitimate online gambling.

The Solution

New Jersey’s online gaming community has been anticipating a fix for this problem for quite some time now. Well, luckily for them, they now have an easier way to deposit money into their online casino accounts using their credit cards.

This is facilitated by a collaboration between Sugarhouse Online Casino (playsugarhouse.com), an online establishment, and Wyrz, an experienced payment provider. The two have created a system that allows customers to deposit money into their individual online gaming accounts with nearly all the available credit cards.

“Many may not be aware that one of the biggest challenges with online gaming in New Jersey has to do with depositing money to play,” Stetz explained. “When a player tries to fund their account with a conventional debit or credit card payment, the transaction would often fail. Now thanks to the partnership between playsugarhouse.com and Wyrz, that is no longer an issue for those looking to wager and win on the exciting casino games offered on the site.”

This will hopefully give online gamblers the ability to play stress-free since they no longer have to worry about their payments being declined by the bank.

“This should help the New Jersey tax income from gaming as well because all players will be able to play,” Stetz added.

SBTech Partners with Golden Nugget for Sportsbooks Venture

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Leading sports betting solutions provider, SBTech continues to snap up new business and partnerships in the United States. One of its latest deals involves a partnership with Golden Nugget Casino to launch an omnichannel sports betting solution for Golden Nugget’s casino in Mississippi in New Jersey. Under the new partnership, SBTech will be integrating its sportsbook with Golden Nugget’s existing online gaming platform in the two states, providing a full platform and a sportsbook solution that will include integration into their existing casino management systems.

In addition to this, the sport betting solutions provider will also be responsible for developing a custom and highly flexible front-end for Golden Nugget in a bid to ensure maximum differentiation. In a similar note, SBTech will apply a bespoke trading strategy and non-pooled risk management that is powered by unrivaled levels of automation which will give Golden Nugget Casinos the opportunity to shake up the United States market with its unique pricing for all sports.

“Since sports betting is a critical component of our successful expansion for online betting and gaming in the US, SBTech persisted through our arduous review process. In the end, we knew SBTech was the right partner for us because of its industry-leading retail and online technology, their significant and diverse regulatory experience, as well as its innovative product-driven approach,” Golden Nugget Casino’s senior vice president, Thomas Winter commented.

The partnership is also set to significantly contribute to SBTech’s endeavor to meet the licensing requirements set by both Mississippi and New Jersey. Both companies will benefit from SBTech’s live offering which will reinforce the long-term success of Golden Nugget’s sportsbooks. Customers can expect to enjoy some of the industry’s widest range of events and markets and groundbreaking new mobile-focused features like Action Betting and Pulse Bet, both of which will boost in-play turnover from key gaming demographics.

“I’m very pleased to confirm our latest strategic partnership with a major US operator. Golden Nugget fully shares our vision of leveraging the power of innovation to achieve sports betting success, and as the US market matures, I’m confident of the potential for further collaboration in multiple jurisdictions,” Richard Carter, the SBTech CEO said.

SBTech’s Partnership with Rocket X

Rocket X, which operates a number of gambling sites in the United Kingdome has also recently struck a partnership deal with SBTech. This one also involves supplying the former’s sportsbook to a number of UK-facing sites. The partnership was contracted directly in conjunction with LeoVegas, a leading Swedish mobile gaming operator that created the Rocket X brands earlier in March in a move to consolidate its UK assets.

“The strength of SBTech’s in-play coverage, its technological and regulatory expertise, proven track record of powering high-growth operators in the UK and wide range of responsible gambling controls were at the heart of our decision to sign this agreement. With the power of one of the industry’s top sportsbooks behind us, I’m confident of achieving a significant share in the uniquely competitive UK market,” Rocket X CEO, Mark Good said.

Pennsylvania’s Comprehensive Gambling Expansion Surges On

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The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) has confirmed that the state’s plans for the establishment of mini-casinos, online gambling and a number of other developments are well underway. The members of the board believe that it is going to be a fairly smooth sail from here on out now that a lawsuit that has been challenging the gaming expansion has been dropped.

Even so, everything pertaining to the Keystone State’s comprehensive gambling expansion was already in the right regardless of the setbacks that included the said lawsuit.

“These are very busy times for the Gaming Control Board,” said Doug Harbach, the PGCB spokesperson. “We have six expansion initiatives that we are part of…There’s never been a jurisdiction in the United States that had to get that many types of gaming up and running in a very brief period of time.”

Filed by Penn National, the operator of Pennsylvania’s Hollywood Casino, the lawsuit which was filed earlier this year cited the company’s concerns that the legalization of mini-casinos would jeopardize and cannibalize their casino operation in the state. The lawsuit was, therefore, seeking to have the federal courts pass a ruling that would block the new Category 4 casino provisions since they treated the state’s existing operators unfairly and contained “unconstitutional” language.

According to Harbach, the Penn National lawsuit was one of the most significant setbacks to the Keystone State’s comprehensive gaming expansion. Even though some other issues may arise in the near future, Penn National’s decision to drop to the lawsuit will definitely lighten the load.

“We made a business decision to withdraw our lawsuits against the Category 4 law,” said Penn National spokesperson, Eric Schippers. “While we continue to believe in the merits of our arguments, we have chosen to focus entirely on our development efforts for our two new casinos, rather than pursue what is likely to be a lengthy and costly legal battle.”
“As previously stated, our goal in pursuing our Category 4 licenses is both defensive, in terms of protecting our existing investment at Hollywood Casino from new competition, and offensive in terms of penetrating more deeply into more populous market areas to our south and east, in order to drive incremental value for our shareholders.”

Internet Gambling

While the state is still handling and reviewing mini-casino proposals, the iGaming license process is also in progress. Already, nine of the state’s 13 casinos have paid the discounted $10 million licensing fee for slot machines, poker, and table games.

“Once we get the iGaming up, of course then we’ll start to look at the airport gaming,” Harbach added. “We’ve got the video gaming terminals at the truck stops…Course we began to do some regulation on fantasy sports and have collected taxes on that for a couple months. So, all those things.”

Bitcoin Crosses $8,000 Mark, Up 20 Percent in One Week

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Bitcoin’s price yesterday crossed the $8,000 mark for the very first time in over a month. This has already begun to spark speculations that this could be the return of the bull run that last year propelled bitcoin to its all-time high of almost $20,000. But, is it?

This recent rise in bitcoin’s price comes just after a week that saw it increase in value by about 20 percent following news that established financial institutions were eyeing the possibilities of venturing into bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a well as a ton of positive regulatory new from all around the world.

On the same note, bitcoins surge in value has been affecting many other aspects of the crypto industry including the so-called bitcoin dominance which rose to 47 percent this week, which is the highest it has ever been since December 2017 – bitcoin dominance is a measure of how much the total digital currency market is controlled by bitcoin.

What Is the Cause?

Many experts and crypto enthusiasts believe that bullishness around bitcoin can be attributed to the expected approval of a bitcoin exchange trade fund (ETF) that is currently being mulled over by the United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). The ETF was filed by New York-based VanEck and a blockchain platform known as SolidX through the Chicago Board of Exchange (CBOE).

If this bitcoin ETF is approved, people will be able to buy bitcoin without having to deal with existing clunky exchanges that usually struggle with cumbersome regulation and lack of trust from the public. According to a report filed but the ICO Journal a week ago, given the rise in bitcoin’s price, it appears that the bitcoin ETF is likely to get approved.

“I would call [the likelihood of approval] 90% at this point. The crypto markets have moderated and regulators have watched the lack of drama surrounding bitcoin futures across several global exchanges,” one of the ICO Journal’s unnamed sources reportedly commented. “The price moderation and adoption of a peer product is what the conversations have centered around. In January we were justifiably concerned about a bubble and the harm a quickly approved product could attract speculators and create losses that led to significant lawsuits. Now, those factors seem to be mitigated significantly.”

Global Regulatory Developments

Investors have also been quite keen on global regulatory news and this might also have something to do with the surge in bitcoin’s value. For instance, South Korea last week set up a government department that is tasked with creating policy initiatives around cryptocurrencies and financial technology.

“Regulation is moving in apace with positive murmurings from governments as they understand the opportunities and risks, and how to tailor their approaches — South Korea being the latest to give another tacit nod,” Charles Hayter, chief executive of digital coin comparison site CryptoCompare, said in an email on addressed to CNBC.

Highlights of the IOC and GAISF’s Lausanne Esports Forum

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The Olympic Esports Forum that was held on Saturday in Lausanne, Switzerland kicked off with opening remarks from Patrick Baumann, the president of the Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF). In his welcome speech, he said the main objective of the forum was to “build a joint understanding between the Esports community and the Olympic movement,” that involves structure and values that would set “the platform for joint engagement.”

He also pointed out that many of the stakeholders were considering the most “mutually beneficial” steps that could be taken to forward the agenda of taking Esports to the next level.

The Esports Forum majorly focused on the areas of commonality and those that offered opportunities for collaboration. This included discussions about whether Esports could be eventually recognized as a sport as well as the form that would best suit its representation within the Olympic Movement.

As it stands, there are no official organizations representing the global Esports industry and this makes it rather difficult for Esports to align itself with the Olympic values, rules, and regulations. Therefore, the forum recognized that ensuring this would be a lengthy process and so the consideration of whether Esports could be added into the Olympic program was not an immediate goal.

More than 150 representatives from various Esports and gaming companies participated alongside a large number of players, teams, publishers, sponsors, media and sponsors as well as officials from the International Sports Federation, National Olympic Committees, the International Olympic Committee and Global Association of International Sports Federations. Also in attendance were a decent number of athletes and broadcasters. Former professional basketball player, Rick Fox acted as the forum’s host moderator.

Calls for Inclusion of More Women in Esports

Among the stakeholder that attended the forum was a panel that was specifically focused on gender equality in various sectors of the Esports industry. Panelist discussed the challenges that both traditional sports and Esports have in common with regards to gender inequality.

“Women make up about 25% of the Esports player base, so why aren’t they in the top?” asked PMS Clan founder and director at Twitch, Amber Dalton. “The fact is boys start much, much earlier. I believe if we can get girls early, playing as long as boys do, we’ll get women playing […] Women and girls simply aren’t getting that exposure. We need amateur leagues to build them up for pro events later.”

These efforts are clearly a nod to the numerous female Esports teams that exist at the moment. They include an all-female Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team known as Team Dignitas which was the first female team to win a championship for the Dignitas Organization.

“I think what’s great about esports is that we have an eco-system here where anybody can put together a tournament. There are tools and platforms available for female players to set up their own tournaments,” BITKRAFT Esports founding partner Jens Hilgers said.

Sweden Welcomes International Online Poker Operators

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Sweden’s love affair with poker has existed for a very long time. However, its growth has to some extent always been impeded by the fact that the market has since the beginning of time been monopolized by the state. Things, fortunately, took a turn for the better in June 2018, when the newly introduced gambling laws did away with the state’s monopoly over online poker. This is exciting news, especially for the Swedish poker players who will soon be able to play online poker on international platforms other than the state-run Svenska Spel, and also play against players from other parts of the globe.

Keeping Up with Reality

Sweden was, in 2013, found to have been in violation of several of the European Union’s law especially with regards to a law that required all the member states to allow international operators to obtain internet gaming licenses. Despite this, as witnessed, it took five years for the country’s authorities to finally open up the market to international poker sites. Still, the state-owned Svenska Spel will continue to operate as it has always done until the ban on international poker and gambling platforms is lifted on January 1, 2019.

One factor that seems to have contributed to this huge decision is the Swedish authorities’ realization that it is almost impossible to enforce such a strict monopoly on the Swedish residents or any other person for that matter. This is simply due to the fact that the internet has always offered and will likely continue offering workarounds that render such laws as Sweden’s internet gambling monopoly useless. In fact, a number of online gambling operators such as PartyPoker, PokerStars, and 888Poker have been active in Sweden all this while without holding licenses from the Swedish authorities.

Sweden also hopes to tackle the issue of criminal activity with this move – it is common knowledge that unregulated gambling activities will more often than not facilitate or foster criminal activities. They hope that creating a more liberal online gambling industry, they will finally be able to curb or at least significantly minimize this particular problem.

More Details

Interested international online poker operators will be able to start applying for the necessary licenses on August 1 and the ones that will be lucky enough to be approved will be subject to an 18 percent tax. Svenska Pel will, however, not be subject to this tax. It will keep operating and supporting the country as usual with the stakeholders hoping that it will remain popular among Swedish online gamblers.

The new laws have now given the Swedish Gambling Authority (SGA) more power and it now has the authority to close down any of the online gaming operators that are offering their services without a license.