Let your mouth speak archive

The Netherlands could soon become the latest nation to legalize online gambling following the passage of historic legislation by the European country’s House Of Representatives on Thursday.

According to a statement from Amsterdam-based gaming consultancy Revenue Engineers, the Dutch Remote Gaming Bill ratified by the lower house is now expected to be “rubber stamped” by the Senate later this year, which means that its regulations could come into force as early as next year.

Revenue Engineers stated that the legislation, which is due to be welcomed by online gaming firms “looking to make a move” into the Dutch market, will pave the way for The Netherlands to operate a fully regulated online gambling market while creating a “wealth of new opportunities for operators and providers”.

The Dutch Remote Gaming Bill was passed only after a number of amendments were approved including one that will prohibit lotteries and land-based casino operators from utilizing existing player databases in order to promote their online offerings. A second is to require brick-and-mortar casinos to erect physical entry and player identification barriers as well as contribute to a problem gambling fund.

“We are absolutely delighted to see the Dutch Remote Gaming Bill finally pass through parliament,” read a statement from Jaspar Hoekert from Revenue Engineers. “While there are some aspects of the legislation that are not ideal, this is still a very workable framework and I am confident that The Netherlands will quickly emerge as one of Europe’s most important gaming jurisdictions. For any operators or providers looking to make the most of this new opportunity, it is important to act quickly and seek local expertise.”




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If you’ve never played Counter-Strike, you might not know what a weapon skin is. If you haven’t used weapon skins, you likely don’t know about the $2.3 billion gambling industry that’s grown up around them.

And if you have no idea what any of these things are, you’re going to have a rough time deciphering the strange weapon skin gambling scandal currently roiling the competitive video gaming world. But the unfolding drama raises big questions about the roach-like immortality of online betting, and its ability to draw in minors with parents’ credit cards. No matter how regulators take action, it seems like there’s always a new way to gamble.

Already, two Counter-Strike stars are being sued by a parent on behalf of her child, who claims they fostered an illegal online gambling scene marketed to minors. And that could just be the beginning.

From The Start

The story starts, more or less, in 1998, when the new video game company Valve released its first game, Half-Life. The game was a huge hit with critics and gamers alike, and remains one of the most influential of all time. With such popularity came a community of modders: often-independent developers who used the core of Half-Life to build their own games.

Counter-Strike was one of the most successful of those mods, an online multiplayer game where players competed as either terrorists trying to complete an objective like planting a bomb, or as counter-terrorists trying to kill them and foil their plans. Counter-Strike was so popular, Valve quickly bought it and hired its developers, beginning a series of successful Valve-made Counter-Strike games.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), the latest in the series, didn’t initially do very well after its release in 2012. For much of its first year, the 13-year-old and 9-year-old previous versions were each more popular than the new game. But a year after CS:GO’s release, Valve introduced weapon skins, and it changed everything.

In-Game Gambling

In 2016, Valve is not just a game publisher, but also the creator of Steam, the most popular service for buying, downloading, and playing computer games, and a requirement for playing CS:GO. The nice thing about owning the platform is that getting gamers to buy things in games with real money is pretty easy. After all, they already gave Steam their credit card numbers to buy the game in the first place.

It only takes a couple clicks to get from a game of CS:GO to buying what’s known as a “crate,” a $3 shot at finding a rare weapon skin. Like buying a pack of Pokemon cards or baseball cards in days of yore, this is already a low-level sort of gambling. You hope for a holographic charizard or a Dragon Lore AWP skin (currently valued at $1,300), but you’re probably just getting a few magikarp or a 60 cent pistol skin. Steam also allows buying and selling of skins between members of its community (from which Steam takes a cut, of course), but it caps sale prices at $400, meaning the real money exchanges hands elsewhere.

Steam has faced criticism for this feature, especially due to the fact that anyone, including children, with access to a credit card or Paypal account can participate. The official minimum age for registering a Steam account is 13, but that limit is thwarted easily enough by entering whatever age the user wants to.

New Paint Jobs Change the Game

Weapon skins are simply paint jobs for the guns and knives in CS:GO. The normal guns in the game look like guns: gray, metallic, and that’s about it. With custom skins, bright pink, green, blue, red, and orange are popular colors, and dragons, skulls, swirls, and gradients are dominant motifs. This results in the gritty, realistic terrorists looking like they raided an Ed Hardy laser tag arena for their weapons. To this untrained observer, there’s no difference in beauty between a 60 cent skin and a $1,300 skin. That is, they seem equally ugly. And to be clear, different skins do not affect the game in any way.

Skins provide status symbols in a game that isn’t big on individuality. A rare skin is a sign of a dedicated player, and it provides an excellent visual identifier for the elite CS:GO players who participate in competitive matches for spectators, which itself is a major industry.

What skins really added was an easy way to gamble. Competitive matches helped turn skins from simple collectible items into a currency for gambling. Third-party sites appeared quickly, offering the ability to bet skins on games, turning them into a sort of currency. Top CS:GO teams make big money from gambling site sponsorships and the sale of stickers, another complex, lucrative virtual item that’s outside the scope of this story. At least one CS:GO team was even discovered betting on their opponent and purposefully losing a match in order to win tens of thousands of dollars in skins, resulting in the players being banned by Valve.



Online gambling’s weird new frontier: The $2.3 billion business of garishly painted virtual assault rifles - Salon-com

The Dutch lower chamber of parliament passed a bill that will drastically reform Holland’s online gambling laws this week. The Dutch Remote Gambling Act will now, finally, go to the Senate, where it is expected to be approved and passed into law.

The Act has been debated endlessly in the lower house since it was drawn up in 2013, as Holland sought to overhaul its creaking, half-century-old gambling framework and bring it in line with EU regulations.

Holland is a potentially huge market. It’s estimated that some 1.5 million Dutch adults gamble online, and, since the country currently has no licensed gambling websites, it would be accurate to say that all of these players engage with the offshore markets, including PokerStars-eu.

Research by Holland Casino suggests that the regulated market could be worth over €1b ($1.1 billion) per year.


Read more: www-cardschat-com/news/dutch-online-gambling-bill-makes-progress-last-27243

The Canadian province of Quebec’s controversial plan to IP-block online gambling sites is facing its first official challenge.

On Monday, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) filed an application (read it here) with the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), asking it to reject Quebec’s Bill 74 as an unconstitutional challenge to federal control over the internet.

In May, the Quebec legislature approved Bill 74, omnibus legislation that contained language compelling the province’s internet service providers to block the domains of online gambling sites not run by the Loto-Quebec gaming monopoly or any privately operated sites that Loto-Quebec chooses to license (such as Montreal-based Amaya Gaming’s PokerStars brand).

Civil libertarians have decried Bill 74 as an unprecedented act of online censorship while recent court rulings have affirmed the precept that telecommunications fall under federal jurisdiction, making Quebec’s nakedly profit-based protectionism liable to a constitutional challenge.

The application by PIAC, a registered nonprofit that specializes in telecommunications law and consumer protection issues, lists a host of telecom firms, large and small, as signatories. Many of these firms are based outside of Quebec, emphasizing the widely held concern that Bill 74 cannot be allowed to set a precedent for other provincial governments to follow.

THE ARGUMENTS
PIAC argues that Bill 74 directly conflicts with section 36 of the Telecommunications Act, “frustrates” the policy objectives in section 7 of the Act, presents a compliance challenge for Quebec ISPs and, last but not least, “threatens constitutionally-protected free speech.”

PIAC asks the CRTC to declare Bill 74 unconstitutional and to deny any application made by an ISP looking to observe Bill 74’s demands. PIAC also wants the CRTC to issue an interim injunction enjoining ISPs from blocking online gambling sites, or from even taking any steps precedent to blocking such sites.

Quebec has yet to issue IP-blocking orders to ISPs and PIAC notes that it could be “up to 18 months” until an official list of offending sites is compiled. However, PIAC expresses concern that ISPs and wireless service providers will “be forced to begin” to prepare for this eventuality by putting systems in place and hiring and training staff.

PIAC believes these preparations will hurt consumers because of the associated costs, which PIAC says will be passed on to consumers though rate increases or reductions in service and/or network performance. PIAC argues that such actions equate to curtailing of customers’ freedom of expression.

PIAC also scoffs at Quebec’s assertion that Bill 74 is intended to protect the health and well being of Quebecers, pointing out that Quebec “seeks not to ban online gambling but to corral it into a regulatory scheme and in fact into an internet portal (Espacejeux of Loto-Quebec) from which the provincial government can derive fees.”

IT WON’T WORK
PIAC also notes that Quebec’s plans are “practically unworkable.” Consumers could use different DNS servers than their own ISP or employ virtual private networks (VPN). And that’s not even accounting for operators’ use of mirror sites that have left countries like Russia playing an infinite game of domain whack-a-mole.

What’s more, Quebec has no regulatory or policy tools in the area of telecommunications and would therefore need the CRTC to enforce this law. PIAC believes the CRTC would be quickly fed up with being deluged with inquiries, applications and calls for enforcement.

THE STEEPEST OF SLIPPERY SLOPES
PIAC expresses concerns that if Quebec is allowed to implement Bill 74, “other provinces will follow suit for various reasons (fiscal or otherwise) in developing schemes of regulation and censorship that will impair free speech.”

PIAC notes that once ISPs have gone to the trouble and expense of installing their blocking apparatus, they aren’t likely to remove it, and companies will then look for ways to utilize their new tools. “This vastly increases the risk to consumers of future surveillance (either corporate or state) and destroys consumer privacy.”

PIAC concludes its argument with this well-crafted paragraph:

“There is no overwhelming policy goal that would justify the drastic step of approving blocking of certain content from the Internet, whether to enable Bill 74 or as a moral or public policy goal. The Commission has no evidence of such a need and PIAC submits that such evidence would have to be of an evil so overwhelming that it trumped the rights of all users of the Internet for otherwise lawful purposes and expression – an extremely high, most likely constitutionally impossible, barrier.”





Advocacy Group Challenges Quebec Plan to Block Gambling Sites | Online Gambling News : CalvinAyre-com

Pennsylvania gamblers will have to wait until the fall to learn if their state will become the fourth to pass online gambling legislation.

Late last month, Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives approved a legislative package that included both online gambling and daily fantasy sports, as well as slots at off-track betting parlors and at six state airports, which will also be allowed to offer mobile gambling services to bored travelers.

Gov. Tom Wolf signed the spending portion of the state’s budget over the weekend, and legislators hoped to pass the revenue portion – including the gambling options – on Tuesday. Alas, legislators proved incapable of herding enough cats to pass the revenue plan, although they vowed to return and give it the old college try on Wednesday.

However, the Associated Press quoted Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Browne saying the gambling legislation would not be included in any revenue plan passed this week. Browne said gambling would have to wait until the fall, but he claimed the estimated $100m the gambling options are projected to raise in year one would be required to help close the budget gap.

Of course, anything can happen between now and the fall. The Senate could approve the House’s gambling package as is or approve some elements while expunging others. They could even sneak the gambling language back into the revenue package before this week’s vote.

It’s theoretically possible that vehemently anti-online casino boss Sheldon Adelson could marshal his lobbying forces to convince legislators to expunge the online component, but Sands Bethlehem president Mark Juliano’s most recent comment on the legislation was that Sands viewed the OTB slots proposal as a greater concern than online gambling.

With California’s bickering stakeholders no closer to consensus, Pennsylvania is/was America’s last best online gambling hope for 2016. Should Pennsylvania fail to pass online legislation this year, it would make four long years since New Jersey’s legislature authorized its regulated online gambling market in December 2012...




Pennsylvania Delays Online Gambling Vote Until Fall | Online Gambling News : CalvinAyre-com

They can't stop Fantasy Sports, it's getting too popular.

They can't stop Fantasy Sports, it's getting too popular.

I can only agree from what I see Fantasy Sports are huge and widely played among all ages.

Valve Software has released a statement denouncing third-party gambling sites that have been using Steam’s in-game item trading system to exchange weapon and item skins that can be sold for real money making it clear that their actions are a violation of Steam’s terms of service.

Valve has recently become the target of two separate lawsuits which allege that the company has been allowing an illegal online gambling market to spring up in the communities of its online gaming communities such as the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community.

At the time the suit was filed Valve didn’t make any public response, but the statement recently posted by Erik Johnson on the Steam site said that Valve does not profit directly from the actions of these gambling sites and that “false assumptions” have been been with regards to Valve’s complicity.

“In 2011, we added a feature to Steam that enabled users to trade in-game items as a way to make it easier for people to get the items they wanted in games featuring in-game economies.

Since then a number of gambling sites started leveraging the Steam trading system, and there’s been some false assumptions about our involvement with these sites. We’d like to clarify that we have no business relationships with any of these sites. We have never received any revenue from them. And Steam does not have a system for turning in-game items into real world currency.


Johnson explained that the sites have been operating by “using the OpenID API as a way for users to prove ownership of their Steam accounts and items. Any other information they obtain about a user's Steam account is either manually disclosed by the user or obtained from the user’s Steam Community profile (when the user has chosen to make their profile public).” He says the sites also “create automated Steam accounts that make the same web calls as individual Steam users.”

Creating automated Steam accounts that masquerade as real users is, according to Johnson, specifically going against the rules of Steam’s API and its user agreement.

As far as taking action goes, Valve says that it will "start sending notices to these sites requesting they cease operations through Steam, and further pursue the matter as necessary” and that “users should probably consider this information as they manage their in-game item inventory and trade activity.”

It’s not entirely clear what Valve means by “further pursue the matter as necessary” but this statement marks Valve breaking a conspicuous silence on the gaming gambling subculture and its feelings towards it.



Valve denounces third-party gambling sites over Steam use | Gaming | Lifestyle | The Independent

A Vietnam-facing online gambling site is using the Facebook Live streaming service to market its wares to punters.

According to a report by Zing.vn, a Facebook fan page named Co Bac Vip (VIP Gambling) recently streamed a 45-minute video of a girl in what appears to be an online gambling live dealer studio playing the popular Vietnamese xoc dia game, in which coin-shaped tokens are shaken in a bowl, which is then inverted, revealing the lucky (or not) result.

The video was played in a loop all day, attracting over 54k views and 2,100 comments. The page included links that took users to Cobacvip-com, an actual online gambling site where players could wager real money on xoc dia and other casino games or bet on sports.

Casino gambling is illegal in Vietnam, unless you’re a foreign tourist or a Vietnamese citizen holding an international passport. The government is toying with the idea of relaxing these restrictions, but they’ve been saying that for a while, and until that happy day arrives, local residents’ only options are underground gambling dens, casinos located across the border in Cambodia or internationally licensed online gambling sites.

Online sports betting is also illegal, a fact underscored by numerous busts of sites taking wagers on the Euro 2016 football tournament. The most prominent bust saw 23 individuals detained for their connection to a ring that handled over $340m in football wagers.

The site’s ringleader managed to evade the authorities’ grasp until this week, when 43-year-old Bui Quang Duong was arrested in Hai Phong. Thann Nien News quoted police saying that when Duong learned of his henchmen being arrested, he fled by boat to a small town in Quang Ninh province. Recognizing the inevitable, police say Duong has admitted his guilt.

Vietnam’s Penal Code imposes harsh penalties on betting organizers, but bettors are subject to similarly harsh penalties based on the size of their wager. For bets below VND 50m ($2,240), bettors face fines of VND 5-50m and jail terms of three months to three years. Wagers above VND 50m will land you in jail for two to seven years.




Vietnam Gambling Site Markets Itself Via Facebook Live | Online Gambling News : CalvinAyre-com

North Korea has an image in the international community of being one of the most secretive and guarded countries in the world right now under the leadership of Kim Jong Un. Gambling is illegal in North Korea but the government allows a number of illegal gambling websites to operate and offer its services to foreigners as they get a major cut of the profits, according to various reports over the years including a recent release over UPI.

These illegal online gambling providers often target residents in neighboring South Korea and in total is said to generate around $866 million for the Kim Jong Un regime. These numbers are extremely impressive considering the fact that the North Korea’s GDP stands at $40 billion. North Korea not only profits from the illegal gambling industry but has also developed multiple teams of sophisticated hackers and cyber developers who create innovative gambling software which is then sold to offshore gambling providers.

The chief of South Korea’s Defense Security Command, Cho Hyun-chun has stated that there are more than 6,000 full time hackers assembled by the North Korean government who have been given the responsibility to wage cyber attacks, online espionage and hack into confidential websites with a special focus on South Korea. The intelligence unit in Seoul states that the North Korean cyber division called Bureau 121 is responsible for employing these 6,000 hackers.

While numerous reports paint North Korea as a nation that is under developed and oppressive with its citizens suffering due to a lack of basic amenities, the government has chosen to invest heavily into its cyber division to prepare itself to hack some of the most sophisticated systems in the world. The government has continued to aggressively build its cyber cell over the last couple of years.

Cho stated that this massive cyber army is based out of Pyongyang and was initially assembled back in the 1990s’. The operations are split into two categories where the first group are responsible for distributing audio and video materials that are encrypted and can be used for online espionage. The second group is run by North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau and departments which are relevant to IT operations and are responsible for online gambling operations and software development.

During the 2014 FIFA World Cup, a total of 15 nationals from North Korea were arrested by the authorities in Cambodia for running an underground online betting world cup football operation and $8.6 million in betting funds were seized.

In April 2016, Gen. Vincent Brooks addressed the growth of hackers in North Korea and told Senate leaders in the US “This is an area of growth. While I would not characterize them as the best in the world, they are among the best in the world and the best organized.”





news-worldcasinodirectory-com/north-korea-profiting-from-lucrative-online-gambling-industry-and-cyber-operations-31133

Of course Kim Jong Un have some tricks in his sleeve to generate more income to the state but I doubt the people of north korea will see anything but a few cents.

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email [email]ftsales-support@ft-com[/email] to buy additional rights. Baidu investigated over online gambling ads - FT-com

Regulators are investigating stealth banner ads for online gambling that show up only at night on Baidu, the Chinese search engine, in the second advertising scandal this year to engulf China’s alternative to Google.

The Beijing News alleged online gambling sites would register corporate accounts on Baidu through third-party advertising agencies, spoofing real companies that did not hold accounts with the search engine. They would then post ads that would appear only at night.

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email [email]ftsales-support@ft-com[/email] to buy additional rights. Baidu investigated over online gambling ads - FT-com

The Cyber Administration of China said it would investigate the matter and publish its findings “in due course”. In May, regulators vowed to crack down on misleading medical advertisements, in a case also involving Baidu.

Baidu, which said it had reported the latest case to police, acknowledged loopholes in its systems. “Baidu’s anti-cheating system still has deficiencies. As a next step, we will strengthen the accuracy and coverage of the system and combat illegal information with full force,” Gu Guodong, executive marketing director, said this week.

It has been a difficult week for the company, which also faces US shareholders’ displeasure at a proposed buyout of its online video portal by Robin Li, its founder.

Acacia Partners, the New York-based investment firm that owns almost 1 per cent of the Nasdaq-listed company, has written to Mr Li, who is chairman and chief executive of Baidu. Its letter says his proposed $2.8bn purchase of the group’s 80 per cent stake in iQiyi would be “against the best long-term interest of Baidu and its shareholders” and a “grave mistake”.

Baidu has come under pressure as customers switch from PCs to smartphones, increasingly accessing the internet through mobile devices and social networking apps rather than search engines. It has been selling off some investments in the fast-growing but lossmaking online travel and online video sectors. In February, Mr Li made a non-binding offer for iQiyi. At the time, Baidu said it had set up a committee made up of three independent directors to assess the proposal, which valued the internet video site at about $2.8bn.

In April, Baidu came under fire for the placement of ads linked to a network of private hospitals and privately run clinics embedded in military hospitals. The furore over Baidu’s role accompanied an effort by the civil health bureaucracy to wrest control of lucrative military hospitals from the army.

Analysts estimated at the time that medical advertisements accounted for about 30 per cent of Baidu’s revenues. The search engine was criticised earlier in the year for selling the rights to administer online forums devoted to medical conditions such as haemophilia, which had been previously administered by volunteers.




www-ft-com/cms/s/0/57eb8596-4d8e-11e6-88c5-db83e98a590a-html#axzz4Ewceu9Cu

It can now be said almost without doubt that Poland will be the next European country to regulate its online gambling market. Sadly, this will not happen to the extent operators interested in entering the local market would have liked.

Earlier this week, the country’s Council of Ministers voted in favor of certain amendments to Poland’s current gambling law. The changes, however, aim at restricting the provision of online casino games to the national lottery operator Totalizator Sportowy.

Poland had formerly legalized the provision of online sports betting options within its borders and has recently authorized online poker and casino games. International operators expressed hopes that they would be able to enter the local market with licenses for the provision of online slots and poker. As it seems, however, this has become close to impossible, or at least for now.

Following the latest amendments to the country’s Gambling Act, Totalizator Sportowy will be granted control over all games of chance that will be provided online. Lawmakers explained their decision to implement a state monopoly over slot games with the fact that these are believed to among “the most addictive” forms of gambling. Holding control over online casino games, Totalizator Sportowy will be required to prepare measures focused on the promotion of responsible gambling.

Here it is important to note that the state monopoly will include online slots only. In other words, international poker operators will be able to enter the country’s regulated market. And as previously reported, private groups will no longer be prohibited from organizing land-based poker tournaments. At present, Poland’s residents are allowed to play poker in local casinos only.

The amended gambling law will now be presented to the European Commission. After being reviewed by European authorities, the legal paper will then need a final approval from Polish lawmakers. If everything goes as planned, the country may have a regulated, although highly restricted, gambling market as of January 1, 2017.

Poland’s online gambling market has been estimated at PLN5 billion. However, gray operators have been holding a 90% market share. The country’s government has expressed hopes that once the new law is implemented, licensed operators will take control over 40% of the market by the end of the first year since its adoption. The market share is expected to increase to 80% after three years.

In addition, the amount of PLN637 million is expected to enter the country’s coffers by the end of year one after the regulations have come into force. After three years of implementation, the amount of tax revenue contributed is expected to reach PLN2.32 billion.

Given the latest restrictions introduced, Poland is not likely to turn into international operators’ most preferred destination. What is more, sports betting operators are currently required to pay a 12% tax on sports betting turnover.

Earlier this year, Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and High Education Jarosław Gowin proposed that the current levy be replaced with a 20% one on betting revenue. Denmark implemented a similar tax when it regulated its online gambling market. And the country has turned into a good example for the benefits of the market’s legalization. However, Minister Gowin’s proposal was rejected by lawmakers. According to people with knowledge of the matter, the current taxes would probably scare off international gambling operators.







Poland Introduces Further Online Gambling Restrictions

The Netherlands will start regulating online gambling in early 2017 following the ratification of “the Netherlands Online Gambling Bill early this month.

Before it received a rubber stamp from the Dutch Senate, the online gambling bill passed through the eye of a needle – navigating through a thorough yet heated parliamentary debate and a series of reviews and amendments from the Dutch Democratic and Labour parties.

The legislation imposes a 29% tax on both online and land-based gambling revenue, plus a further 1.5% to fund the activities of the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) regulatory body and another 0.5% to fund problem gambling programs.

Many governments in the European Union and online gambling operators have hailed the newly ratified Dutch gambling law. Dutch players, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to care whether the bill was enacted or not.

Tom Van Beem of BD sport Europe explained that players have become tired of the whole online gambling regulation debacle, which has dragged through a rough road for more than two years before it has come to existence.

Beem pointed out that most Dutch players do not care whether the bill will be ratified or not. Instead they just want to focus their attention more on the product offered by gambling operators.

“We’re tired of the whole regulation part in the Netherlands, it’s useless and we’re not getting further with it. We just want to have good operators. We want to have good odds, we want to have easy deposit and withdrawal opportunities,” Beem told CalvinAyre-com.

Even before the bill was ratified, Beem that between Netherlands have a 230,000 to 450,000 illegal Dutch players to date.

“Honestly, when you look at the numbers playing in the Netherlands, they don’t really care. On the other hand, when you regulate, you get more players of course. But the current players don’t care. If you remove the gambling apps or not, they still play.

There are betting operators, according to Beem, who have been trying to circumvent through the Dutch law in order to illegally publish their advertisements in affiliate websites.

Under the Dutch law, affiliate websites are not allowed to make any advertisements for betting operators. Should they be caught, state regulators will penalize the erring online gambling operator.

“There’s only one operator who was really strict in doing that. Unibet has removed all its advertisements because they are really keen on the Dutch license,” Beem said. “And there are Dutch named casinos but they don’t officially target the Dutch market, because affiliate websites do it for them. So it’s a really big gray area at this moment.”



Dutch Players Shrug off Online Gambling Regulation : CalvinAyre-com

The online gambling division of the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) was the Crown corporation’s fastest growing segment in its most recent fiscal year.

BCLC enjoyed record profit of C$1.31b (US $994m) in the 12 months ending March 31, 2016, 4.7% more than it earned in fiscal 2014-15. Total revenue also set a new record at $3.1b, $197.5m more than the previous year.

BCLC said this achievement was all the more notable given it was the only one of Canada’s provincial gaming monopolies not to suffer a year-on-year revenue decline “in this demand driven environment.”

New win per capita was $501, up from $482 in 2014-15 and better than BCLC’s target of $477. BCLC says it benefited from a record number of large lottery jackpots and increased slots play as the falling Canadian dollar discouraged many gamblers from crossing over the border to play in US casinos.

BCLC’s lottery revenue jumped 15.8% to $1.15b last year, which the corporation humble-bragged represented the biggest growth among all Canadian provinces and US states over the reporting period.

BCLC’s online gambling site PlayNow-com reported revenue up 24% to $135.5m (US $102.8m) last year, easily surpassing BCLC’s $115.8m target. The revenue tally not only set a new record, but the pace of online growth was four points better than 2014-15’s figure, and PlayNow’s revenue was more than twice the sum earned by Loto-Quebec’s Espacejeux-com over the same period.

BCLC credited PlayNow’s growth to faster introduction of new casino-style games and other product enhancements. Last week, BCLC said US election props were the most popular type of novelty wagering on PlayNow. The site was the first Canadian-based operator to being taking election wagers in 2014 and most PlayNow bettors are reportedly backing Hillary Clinton to win the poll this November.

BCLC’s casino and community gaming category – which includes 15 casinos, two racinos, 18 community gaming centers and seven commercial bingo halls – reported revenue of $1.81b, essentially flat year-on-year.

For a while now, BCLC has been warning that its VIP table game revenue was likely to fall, and 2015-16 was the year that this anticipated decline materialized. Table game revenue was off 7% to $516.5m, although this was offset by a 5% rise in slots revenue to $1.2b. Land-based poker revenue fell 6% to $19.8m and bingo slipped 4.6% to $71.8m.





PlayNow Gambling Site BCLC’s Fastest Growing Segment | Online Gambling News : CalvinAyre-com

I'm not surprised. People will always gamble doesnt mother if it's illegal or not...

The Republican National Convention ended on Thursday night with one major omission. For the first time since the 1996, the RNC’s platform did not call for a national ban on online gambling.

Since 1997 was the first year when a real money Internet poker site first launched, the omission of an anti-online gambling plank in the RNC’s platform is a radical departure. For the first time since iGaming began, the Republicans do not want it ban.
Support of Anti-Online Gambling Legalization

Sheldon Adelson is a supporter of Donald Trump, who has had fundraising problems. Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, Donald Trump’s VP choice, is also a strong supporter of Restore America’s Wire Act (RAWA).

While many see RAWA as a dead letter, Sheldon Adelson continues to support the legislation. As late as May 2016, Adelson’s senatorial proxy, Sen. Lindsey Graham, slipped the RAWA’s anti-online gambling ban into a 141-page US Senate Appropriations Bill.

That language was taken out of the U.S. House’s version of the same appropriations bill, or else RAWA would be the law of the land today. To see the GOP’s assembly step away from RAWA is a clear rejection of Adelson’s ideas on gambling.
Donald Trump’s Fundraising Problems

The decision is especially notable, because GOP donor Sheldon Adelson is more pivotal to the Republican’s 2016 presidential campaign than ever before. One of the first people Donald Trump sought out after his Thursday night acceptance speech was Adelson. The Adelsons posed for a photo op in the minutes after the speech.

The Trump campaign’s fundraising has been a matter of panic for the rank-and-file of the Republican Party this year. Republicans traditionally have the support of big money donors from corporate interests and old money wealth in America. Financial support does not seem forthcoming in 2016, as the biggest contributors seem concerned by Donald Trump’s economic plans.
Promiment Never Trumpers

The Koch Brothers have been the biggest donors in American politics over the past ten years. They said in 2014 they would spend $900 million on Republican causes in 2016. Charles and David Koch do not support Donald Trump and have indicated they would not fund his campaign. Some have speculated the Koch Brothers see Hillary Clinton’s economic positions to be more in their interests than Trump’s.

New mega-donor Paul Singer is more actively opposed to Trump than the Koch Brothers. The New Yorker and Politico have discussed how Paul Singer was putting together a donor network on the model of the Koch family, presumably for Republican causes.

The same media has tied Paul Singer to the “Never Trump” Movement. Paul Singer’s huge new network of contributors appear to be supporting Trump’s opponents in the GOP ranks.
Sheldon Adelson’s Influence

With so many key fundraisers against him, Donald Trump raised $3.1 million in contributions in May 2015. Hillary Clinton raised $42 million in the same month — 14 times more than Trump. Bloomberg News speculated that the differences in the SuperPAC money was even starker.

Therefore, Sheldon Adelson’s support is key for Trump’s campaign. No one spent more on the 2012 Presidential Election than Adelson, who is thought to have spent $90 million. The common speculation is the casino billionaire plans to spend $100 million on Republicans in 2016.

As a gaming mogul, Sheldon Adelson’s economic well-being is less tied to international trade than the Koch Brothers or Paul Singer. A man who is friends with the showy fellow gaming executive, Steve Wynn, also might be less offended by Donald Trump’s brashness and self-promotion.
$100 Million Bet on Donald Trump

Thus, Sheldon Adelson is seen as the one man with the resources and motivation to fund the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. As Trump was cinching the GOP nomination in May 2016, news stories appeared that long-time Adelson spokesman Andy Abboud was planning a Trump SuperPAC. In recent weeks, it was said that Adelson was opening his purse strings for Trump and was prepared to spend $100 million.

At the convention on Wednesday night, GOP maverick Ted Cruz was supposed to sit in Adelson’s skybox after his now-famous speech. After Sen. Cruz snubbed Trump, Adelson refused to allow inside his private room, because it would be offensive to GOP nominee. When Trump learned later, he went to thank Sheldon Adelson and posed for a photo with the Adelsons.

As Donald Trump famously said, people do not make big donations, unless they want something. With such a close connection, it is important that the Republicans are not supporting a federal online gambling ban. Sheldon Adelson has spent a lot of money these past two years to pass Restore America’s Wire Act (RAWA), which would ban online gambling in all 50 states.





Republican National Convention Leaves Online Gambling Ban out of Party Platform

The growth of the gambling industry and online betting in particular has seen a number of mergers and acquisitions that are creating very big gaming firms that dominate the business landscape. For start up online casinos it has become increasing difficult to gain traction when pitted against very large terrestrial and online gambling operators.

The talk of yet another merger has surfaced about the possible joining of the Rank Group and the 888 Holdings online gambling enterprise to form a major force in the wagering world. Should the two online gambling firms enter into a merger, they will create a £2-billion gambling company with online and terrestrial operations that span multiple regulated markets.

888 Holdings has been looking for expansion opportunities and was one of the participants in an extended bidding war for rival online gambling operator bwin.party. Another rival online betting services provider GVC Holdings eventually bought bwin.party for £1.1 billion just a few months ago. Two other online gambling giants Paddy Power/Betfair and Ladbrokes/Gala Coral, announced that they would join their entities for an enhanced experience within the highly competitive betting market.

888 Holdings, is a Gibraltar-based firm that operates several online gambling web locations, available in multiple regulated jurisdictions in the USA including New Jersey, Nevada, and Delaware, the only three US states where gambling is legally available on the internet. Is based in the United Kingdom and is owner of the

The Rank Group Grosvenor Casinos, considered the UK’s largest chain of terrestrial gambling outlets. Rank also operates two casinos in Belgium and has a rapidly expanding its online sector. Mecca Bingo and Spanish facing Enracha are the other two brands owned by Rank. The merger with 888 Holdings has the possibility to improve Rank’s online presence considered a strategic growth area in the gambling market place.





Online Gambling Giants 888 & Rank Possible Merger | Online-Casinos-com

Antigua’s Prime Minister says his country’s “patience is wearing thin” over the United States’ refusal to negotiate a fair resolution to the two countries’ World Trade Organization (WTO) online gambling dispute.

This week, Antiguan Prime Minister Gaston Browne delivered an address to the nation detailing his frustration in getting the US to abide by the 2004 WTO ruling that Antigua-licensed online gambling operators had been unfairly blocked from accessing the US market.

Browne said the illegal US action had resulted in “lost lucrative jobs for our people and significant revenues to our National Treasury” while the US “benefited by hundreds of millions of dollars from penalties and fines derived from prosecuting” Antigua-based gaming operators.

In 2007, WTO arbitrators determined that Antigua’s economy had suffered a $21m annual loss from the US gambling ban. As the US has so far refused to pay a penny of these damages, the total outstanding bill now exceeds $200m, and Browne says a relatively poor nation like Antigua “cannot afford to be deprived” of this sum.

After determining that the US had “taken no action to comply with the rulings,” the WTO authorized Antigua to suspend US intellectual property rights, essentially giving Antigua the right to sell US films, books, music and other copyrighted material without paying royalties.

Browne stressed that his administration, which took power following the June 2014 elections, hadn’t pursued this digital download strategy, opting instead to return in good faith to the negotiating table with the US Trade Representative.

Browne emphasized that Antigua was “not asking for anything more than that which we have lost, and to which we are entitled” under WTO rules. But the latest proposals from the USTR had been “regrettably paltry,” leading Browne’s cabinet to conclude that the USTR isn’t making “a serious commitment to resolve the issue.”

Browne has instructed Ambassador Ronald Sanders in Washington to renew negotiations, but Browne warned that “we may have to consider implementing the enforcement options.” Taking the digital download route was “not our preferred option” but Browne warned that “this matter has drawn on for too long to the severe disadvantage” of Antiguan citizens.

Browne stressed that his country’s decision to pursue a WTO claim “was not a hostile act or an indication of any lack of friendship toward the US” and that US tourists and investors “were then – as they are now – warmly welcomed in our country.”

US President Barack Obama has publicly claimed that “might is not right” in international trade and Browne hoped that Antigua and the US could maintain their relationship as “two friendly countries with a history of cooperation and collaboration.”

Browne noted that taking trade dispute claims to the WTO “is a recourse used by the US more than any other nation.” Browne concluded by saying Antigua’s government had a similar “duty of care to our people” and was “prepared to pursue the remedies as authorized by the WTO in the interest of fairness.”





Antigua’s Patience “Wearing Thin” with USTR over WTO Dispute | Online Gambling News : CalvinAyre-com

When New Jersey launched its legal gambling sites on November 21, 2013, there were lofty expectations. At least in the early days, the industry ended up being more fizzle than sizzle.

During the early days, would-be players found:

the registration process cumbersome;
the technology put in place to verify their identity and location less than perfect;
despite its legality, most banks and financial institutions continued to decline credit card transactions, conflating legal online gambling sites with illegal offshore online gaming sites.

The lucky customers who did manage to register and fund an account were also greeted with stripped-down software that appeared to be several generations behind what the same operators were using in other markets around the globe.

The market was also devoid of mobile platforms for several months.

Needless to say, during the first few weeks and months of the industry, the New Jersey online gamblers who dealt with these issues grew frustrated and disillusioned with the industry.

Over the past three years, New Jersey regulators and operators have worked tirelessly to fix many of the technical problems and improve their product offerings.

With operators and regulators now possessing several years of experience, most people believe Pennsylvania will be able to build on the foundation New Jersey created. PA should be able to do it without going through the same growing pains and have a smoother launch than its eastern neighbor.

That’s all assuming that the legislature passes a gambling expansion as it has promised to do this fall.
Most of the kinks have been worked out

It may not have been smooth at the start, but since launching in 2013, New Jersey has done an excellent job improving, and in some cases streamlining its geolocation, payment processing, and player verification procedures, most of which are now running optimally.
Geolocation

New Jersey instituted an entirely new, and completely untested multi-layered framework for its geolocation checks. Nevada, with sparse border population, was able to use a simpler method.

There was also an insistence by state regulators and the online operators to err on the side of caution. They didn’t want to open the door for naysayers to call out the industry’s inability to live up to its promises, and prevent would-be out-of-state players from accessing the site.

Because of this, false-negatives (players in New Jersey that the geolocation software incorrectly identified as being located outside of New Jersey) as well as disconnects were an all too common problem.

These geolocation problems are now a thing of the past. The technology is reliable and effective, with false-negatives and disconnects uncommon.
Payment processing

Payment processing was an unforeseen issue.

After legalizing online gambling, operators and regulators assumed banks would process these transactions due to the express legality of these sites, and didn’t give the issue much thought as the launch date approached.

When the sites launched, they quickly realized how big of a problem this was.

In the industry’s earliest days, less than 10 percent of credit card transactions were being approved.

After a number of improvements, the success rates are now as high as 80 percent, according to several New Jersey online gaming operators.

The changes that have occurred include:

outreach to educate banks and financial institutions;
creation of new credit card codes;
sites forewarning customers about which banks are likely to decline transactions;
better educated customer service employees who can walk customers through the process;
the addition of alternative payment processing methods Neteller, PayNearMe and PayPal.

There is still a lot of room for improvement, but Pennsylvania’s online gambling operators will be better prepared to handle the remaining payment processing hurdles.
Player verification

Like geolocation, lawmakers, regulators and operators wanted zero margin of error when it came to player verification checks.

In 2016, player verification is as robust as ever, but most sites have moved away from collecting all nine digits of social security numbers to just the last four. The verification process is the same either way, but there is less of a mental barrier among users when it’s simply the last four digits they are asked to divulge.
Several online operators already have experience in New Jersey

With no less than four companies already involved in New Jersey’s online gaming industry — 888, GVC, Mohegan Sun (Resorts), and Caesars — Pennsylvania’s casinos will enter the online gambling age with more experience and a better understanding of the market.

Furthermore, a number of Pennsylvania casinos have added online gaming divisions and brought in industry experts to help prepare them for launch.

These operators know that “glitches” and the absence of essential software features like waiting lists and mobile platforms are going to disappoint customers. They know how hard it will be to reengage these customers after the fact.

Additionally, in New Jersey, several operators overspent on marketing early on, to a lot of the low-hanging fruit. That led to a lack of money in their marketing coffers when the market stagnated and player acquisition costs rose.

Among other things, these experienced operators will:

know what pitfalls to avoid;
better anticipate the market size;
have a better understanding of what marketing campaigns and promotions resonate.

Expectations will be tamped down

Finally, while it’s often framed as a failure, New Jersey’s online gaming industry has been quite successful.

Nearly three years in, the market continues to mature, and has been nearly flawless on the regulatory front.

All of this has been accomplished despite the rough rollout.

So, ignoring what the detractors of online gamblin