The news in brief for the week of February 20-26
BetandWin broke down talks with FC Barcelona over shirt sponsorship, as the club couldn’t meet the deadline for agreement. The Austrian bookmaker announced in a press release that “the offer expired and now money will be allocated to other important international football clubs.”
Bookie Alerts announced the launch of their rebranded site and alerts service in preparation for the FIFA World Cup. The site, www.bookiealerts.co.uk, is the first in the sportsbetting industry to use a revolutionary desktop alert technology to deliver the latest odds, betting opportunities and special offers from all the leading bookmakers directly to users’ desktops. Punters can compare live odds on their desktop, as well as being alerted to the latest free bets and promotions, simply from downloading the free application.
CasinoAffiliatePrograms.com, a leading online gaming industry resource, announced that they are suspending the certification of Party Gaming’s affiliate program Party Partners, in response to the acquisition terms Party Gaming outlined for EmpirePoker.com. The $250m acquisition, which was announced on February 15, includes migrating Empire Poker players to a consolidated platform that no longer honors the affiliate relationship that initiated the player relationship. Under the new terms, affiliates who had participated in the Empire Online affiliate program will receive no compensation or consideration for the thousands of players they acquired for EmpirePoker.com. This is clearly in violation of the terms and conditions they had agreed to with Empire Online whereby they would receive compensation on the sales and value generated by their players for the life of their association with the poker room. Louis Fabiano, Editor of CAP, said in a statement: “As a result of this predatory action by Party Partners, CasinoAffiliatePrograms.com is left with no alternative but to suspend their certification at CAP and advise all affiliates to cease promotion of all PartyGaming clients until a satisfactory resolution to this problem can be worked out. Our affiliate webmasters have made it clear that they want a fair compensation plan that recognizes and rewards their efforts as previously agreed upon. It would be relatively easy for Party Partners to transfer all existing players and affiliate accounts to the PartyGaming platform and honor the existing terms and conditions. We are hopeful that PartyPartners will do the right thing and properly include their affiliate partners.”
Global Gaming Technologies issued a statement to the London Stock Exchange saying that the company is in discussions with Betfair to resolve an alleged breach of its API Software Vendor License. Ten days ago, a couple of days after GGT officially launched its OddsTrader product, subscribers to the service received a message from Betfair that informed them of the suspension of the service effective March 16. GGT said to be hopeful of a swift resolution allowing new customers to be accepted onto the platform for the remainder of the trial.
Ladbrokes spokesman Robin Hutchison announced that Thierry Henry second half goal in Arsenal victory against Real Madrid, saved the firm up to £250,000 in the match betting. “Henry cost us over 50k by opening the scoring – but we’ll take it any day in comparison to the win draw win. We layed Real for two days solid and the punters kept coming even when they were 1/2. It’s a terrific – not to mention – unexpected result for us,” he said.
London Capital, a financial spread betting company operating under the trading name Capital Spreads, announced its maiden full year results, highlighting an 85% increase, up to £4.8m, in turnover and an operating profit before exceptional items of £1.8m. Daily spread betting trades during the year were up 141%, while the number of client accounts increased 128% to 4,319. The company also announced the launch of binary bets, a hybrid product combining spread and fixed odds betting. Commenting on the results, Frank Chapman, Chief Executive Officer, said: “We have continued to experience strong trading since our flotation at the end of last year with encouraging growth in both the number of live customer accounts and the daily trading volumes in the spread betting division. We are delighted with the launch of Capital Forex Pro and binary bets which we believe will further enhance the development of the business in 2006.”
British casino operator London Clubs International agreed to sell its flagship casino Les Ambassadeurs to Twinwood Ltd. for £115 million in cash. Tobacco tycoon Putera Sampoerna is understood to be behind the firm buying the Mayfair venue.
Poker Academy released Poker Academy Pro Texas Hold’em Version 2.5, the first Texas Hold’em poker software game and training tool that allows its users to create, simulate, and host online multi-table tournaments of any structure. Players are now able to analyze their game play by importing hand histories from popular online poker rooms, including Party Poker, Poker Stars and Paradise Poker.
Sporting News, the 120-year-old weekly magazine, is reportedly seeking a buyer. The oldest sports publication in the United States was once the leading source of statistics craved by fans. But much of that information is now available online for free and on a more timely basis. Sporting News was recently hit by a three-year federal investigation into charges that it promoted internet gambling by taking advertisements from overseas online casinos. It reached a settlement last month under which it agreed to pay a $4.2 million fine and spend $3 million on a three-year public service campaign against internet and telephone gambling.
Tabcorp Holdings, Australia’s top gaming group, said first-half net profit rose 12.8 per cent to A$283.2 million, but it warned full-year earnings growth could fall sharply because of a dispute over thouroghbred racing broadcasts that affected betting at the company’s 2,700 off-track betting shops. Chief Executive Matthew Slatter said he hoped the long-running dispute, which has led thoroughbred racing clubs in Sydney and Melbourne to withdraw a broadcasting license from Tabcorp’s SKY Channel and set up a rival network, TVN, could be resolved by the end of the financial year.
Lottery firm Tattersalls has announced its first half-year results since becoming a listed company, reporting an interim profit of $70.2 million. The company also said to be on track to meet its profit forecasts for 2006.
Veikkaus, the Finnish state-owned lottery and pools operator, is to to return more money to the Ministry of Education as a result of improved revenues and profits. Last year, a total of EUR 380 million of Veikkaus’s proceeds were allocated to Finnish arts, sport, science, and youth work. According to Minister of Culture Tanja Karpela, Veikkaus is to return even more money to the Ministry of Education in the coming years, because the annual surpluses from Veikkaus operations, including lotteries, football pools and fixed odds betting, are increasing.
WPT Enterprises and Foxwoods Resort Casino announced that Foxwoods’ newly expanded poker room, set to open in late March, will bear the World Poker Tour name. Steve Lipscomb, founder and Chief Executive Officer of WPT Enterprises, said Foxwoods “WPT World Poker Room” may be a template for others. “We look for a select number of very well-appointed poker rooms, run by the top casino managers in the business to bear our name in the future,” Lipscomb said. “We will be very careful to select our licensees to ensure the highest quality. We hope that in the future, a vacationing poker player will be able to play his way across the country in WPT Poker rooms.”
As reported by eGaming Review, James Murdoch, Chief Executive of UK satellite TV company BSkyB, said in his first ever comments on the subject of gambling, that the link between TV and gambling was destined to be a powerful force in the future. Nick Rust, Managing Director at BSkyB’s betting operation Skybet, said that the power of the link between interactive TV and gambling was only starting to be realized. “It won’t be long before you see a properly interactive poker channel,” he added. “In the last week of February, for instance, there were 11 channels in the UK featuring poker content, but they were all showing it in pretty much the same way. It was very much the same old, same old.” Rust added that “Interactive TV gambling will be very different to internet gambling at present.”
China’s Internet media and content providers have pledged to protect cyberspace from gambling and other “unhealthy content” through self-regulation and legal measures. The call was made at meeting held by the Internet News Service Work Committee under the Internet Society of China (ISC). “In 2005 alone, we received 127,010 complaints from the public, including 68.2 per cent about pornography and 8.15 per cent about gambling frauds,” said Li Jiaming of the ISC.
According to Japanese media reports, the police in Kyoto raided an online casino cafe and took two casino players and two staff members into custody. Internet casino cafes are on the increase in Japan and most seem to use the Big Joy casino brand, which is allegedly powered by Playtech and licensed in the Phillipines. Japan’s Ministry of Justice commented that this was the first case of an offshore online casino gambling bust in Japan.
As reported by the Racing Post, a trading standards officer has prevented more than £40,000 falling into the hands of a bogus tipster after intercepting the mail of a man who claimed a 76 per cent strike rate on his selections. The investigation began after brochures promising guaranteed profits of £21,000 each month from following the recommendations of a tipping line operated by Michael Davenport were distributed to 10,000 homes. Davenport, which is in fact an alias, claimed that out of 117 races last year he won 89 of them. “A success rate that it is just not possible to guarantee,” said Thorne, the officef who prevented the scam. “These sort of horse racing scams have been going for years but usually those who commit are gone without a trace by the time you investigate them because they use a mailing address, not their own. It’s pure chance that in this case I got there first,” he added.
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