Friday, November 30, 2012

Mohegan Sun Chooses Ongame For Their Online Poker Site || Roulette News – Online Roulette and Online Gambling News

Mohegan Sun Chooses Ongame For Their Online Poker Site || Roulette News – Online Roulette and Online Gambling News


Mohegan Sun Chooses Ongame For Their Online Poker Site

By:  Rouletters Gambling News
Friday, November 30th, 2012 at 1:14 am EST/EDT
Better_PerformanceOngame poker network is the chosen network for the online version of the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut.
Many of the old offline brick and mortar casinos are moving very quickly to fill the void from the banning of online gambling in the USA through the Ill conceived ports act in 2006.
Online casinos such as Partygaming and 888 lost the majority of their players when the USA forced payment processors out of business and as the brick and mortar casinos use their branding and stature to enter online poker through websites it is clear the online company without a presence in USA will never recover.
Early 2013 is the hopeful date for the launch of mohegansuncasino.com and it is expected that they will be a dominant player in the online space quite quickly due to not having to worry about legalities like non USA casinos.
This move to use Ongame for the Mohegan Sun Online Poker site is a first by an East Coast operation and it seems to some like a core part of the strategy of the casino moving forward.
The Tribal Gaming Authority of Mohegan own and operate the Mohegan Sun casino and since it opened in 1996 the casino has become the second biggest casino in the USA, employing 10`000 local people mainly tribal to create a 2007 declared revenue of $1.62 Billion.

BBC News - Sportingbet revenues fall in 'challenging' conditions

BBC News - Sportingbet revenues fall in 'challenging' conditions


Sportingbet revenues fall in 'challenging' conditions

Horse racingSportingbet is focusing on sports betting rather than online gaming

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Online gambling firm Sportingbet has reported a fall in first quarter revenues citing "challenging" conditions."
European online poker revenue collapsed nearly 50% reflecting "continued structural decline" of the game, the company said.
The total amount wagered in the three months to 31 October fell to £594.3m, compared with £693.7m for the same quarter last year.
Group revenue fell £21m to £38.8m.
Group chief executive Andrew McIver said: "It was a challenging first quarter but a very strong November".
Sports margins in Australia had been "particularly strong", the company said, after a 29% increase in active customers and rapid growth in the amount being wagered via smartphones and other hand-held devices.
Online poker, which accounts for about 6% of Sportingbet's total gaming revenues, has suffered globally over the last five years thanks to heavy regulation in some jurisdictions, the difficulty and cost of processing payments, and the recent rise of instant sports betting via mobile devices.
The company remains confident that full-year results "will meet its current expectations".
Sportingbet is still waiting for a formal takeover bid to be tabled by William Hill and GVC Holdings, reportedly worth £530m.
Talks are still continuing with a new "put up or shut up" deadline of 4 December.

Casino news | Macau allows mobile gambling

Casino news | Macau allows mobile gambling


Macau going mobile; Leong wants full ban; Tam calls for non-gaming

Jamie Hinks
November 26, 2012
0 Comments and 6 Reactions
MacauMacau’s new slot rules allow casino operators to let patrons gamble using mobile devices inside the walls of brick and mortar casinos. The new rules, set to be enacted tomorrow by the regulator, open the floodgates for mobile gambling by wireless networks “inside gambling areas especially authorised” by the enclave’s regulator. New bylaws also stipulate where slot parlors are located with five-star hotels, non-residential buildings located within a 500-metre range of a casino or resorts “not integrated in a densely populated area” among the only places permitted to accommodate them. The law is likely to affect Melco Crown most out of the casino operators as four or five of their Mocha Club slot lounges may have to relocate.
An executive at SJM Holdings is calling for the government to implement a full smoking ban in Macau’s casinos. Angela Leong On Kei, executive director at the casino firm, is “totally in favor of a full smoking ban inside casinos” and, in her role as a legislative assembly member, questioned Secretary for Economy and Finance Francis Tam Pak Yuen as to why a full ban wont be introduced on January 1. Leong also argued the partial ban will be very hard to enforce and was critical of the decision to bring the rules out so late in the day, commenting: “It is very hard, in such a short period, for casino operators to be able to finish all the works to create smoking areas,” she said.
Tam, the enclave’s Secretary for Economy and Finance, thinks that Macau needs more non-gaming attractions. Also talking at the legislative assembly, Tam stated that non gaming elements are essential or the future of the economy, and added: “Casino operators have to include other amenities in their properties, such as more entertainment and theatre shows, to attract more visitors that do not want only to gamble.”
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Thursday, November 29, 2012

Washington firms, Maryland consultants won big in expanded gambling fight - The Washington Post

Washington firms, Maryland consultants won big in expanded gambling fight - The Washington Post


Washington firms, Maryland consultants won big in expanded gambling fight

A worker makes his way through the gaming floor at Maryland Live!, the state’s largest slots casino. (Katherine Frey — The Washington Post)
Campaign finance reports filed late Tuesday showed a handful of Washington’s biggest media buying firms and Maryland political consultants benefited handsomely from the ballot-box brawl over expanding gambling — the costliest election in state history.
Three ballot-issue committees involved in the fight together raised more than $93 million from gambling companies and others with a stake in Question 7, which will allow a new casino in Prince George’s County and table games at all Maryland slots locations.

Doug Duncan running for Montgomery County executive

Doug Duncan running for Montgomery County executive
The dominant political figure in Montgomery County over the last two decades will run in the 2014 election.

Washington firms, Md. consultants won big in expanded gambling fight

Washington firms, Md. consultants won big in expanded gambling fight
Three ballot-issue committees raised more than $93 million from those with a stake in Question 7.

Gay-rights groups and MGM chipped in to Maryland’s marriage campaign

Gay-rights groups and MGM chipped in to Maryland’s marriage campaign
Supporters raised more than twice as much money as opponents of the measure.
The new reports show about $90.5 million of the money collected was spent on the campaign, with nearly $3 million left sitting in the bank accounts of the ballot-issue committees.
MGM Resorts, which is angling to build a casino at National Harbor, was the biggest donor by far to a pro-gambling expansion committee, contributing about $40 million of the $46 million it raised — much of it for television advertising.
A second pro-expansion committee led by former Prince George’s county executive Wayne K. Curry (D) reported having raised $3.1 million and spent $2.7 million, much of it on direct mail and radio advertising.
Penn National Gaming was the sole funder of a ballot committee on the losing side that reported spending roughly $42 million of the $44 million Penn contributed. The company’s properties include a West Virginia casino that stands to lose business when a new venue opens in Prince George’s.
Cash was heaped by the two larger committees on a tight circle of Washington firms that had experience working for casino owners, as well as ties to top Democrats and Republicans.
Billing hours and commissions mounted for former aides and campaign staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who has an especially close relationship with MGM Resorts, his constituent now best positioned to win rights to construct a towering, Las Vegas-style casino on the southern end of Washington’s skyline.
Former aides to Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), who backed the measure, had much at stake as well. The public affairs firm of O’Malley’s former communications director received payments from both pro-expansion committees; and the brain trust of O’Malley’s 2010 reelection campaign reunited to find the winning message with voters.
Overall, GMMB, the media buying firm on the payroll of the committee backed by MGM, collected the most.
The committee funneled $34.2 million to GMMB to purchase advertising. Company strategists had previously worked on reelection efforts for Reid. The firm’s biggest client this year was President Obama’s campaign.
Media-buying firms take a commission, believed to range between 3 and 15 percent, depending in part on whether the firm also produces the ad.
On the opposition side, the committee backed by Penn National Gaming, sent $25.4 million to Mentzer Media for advertising purchases, and $18.2 million to DCI Group — firms that were also top advertising agents for Republican PACs and the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
The Baltimore public affairs firm of O’Malley’s former communications director, Steve Kearney, directly collected nearly $185,000 from the MGM-backed committee and $60,000 from the Curry committee, the reports showed.
Much of that came in the final weeks when the campaign refocused on a message Kearney’s firm helped sell to lawmakers during a special session in August to put the measure on the ballot — that it boiled down to a vote for Maryland, and against sending money to a Penn casino in West Virginia.
In addition to advertising, the MGM-backed campaign sunk another $1.8 million into robo-calls and phone banking efforts, and millions more into field operations, including get-out-the-vote efforts, in the campaign’s final two weeks, the campaign’s report showed.
The Curry-led committee reported $258,650 in payments to Larry S. Gibson, whose political career has included work on the campaigns of Curry and former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke (D), as well as some national politicians.
I. Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier College in California who has written extensively about gambling said he sees the costly Maryland ballot fight as part of a third wave of legalizing gambling that has allowed casinos to open in about half of U.S. states.
“Gambling is really spreading everywhere, and most initiatives for new casinos now fail because established players want to limit competition,” Rose said. “The only way to overcome that is for proponents to neutralize criticism, and they need to spend a tremendous amount to do that.”

Dutch state to sell casinos, legalise online gambling | Reuters

Dutch state to sell casinos, legalise online gambling | Reuters


Dutch state to sell casinos, legalise online gambling


AMSTERDAM | Wed Nov 28, 2012 9:34am EST
Nov 28 (Reuters) - The Netherlands plans to sell its state-owned casino monopoly and legalise online gambling to open up competition.
The new government, sworn in earlier this month, promised in its coalition agreement to sell Holland Casino and said that online betting and gambling will be legalised.
"It is unclear at this stage if it will be a sale or an initial public offering. The government hasn't decided how the sale will take place," Justin Franssen, a lawyer at VMW Taxand who specialises in the gaming sector, told Reuters.
Holland Casino has 14 venues in the country's larger cities and tourist spots, including Amsterdam and Rotterdam, although they lack the glamour and glitz of Las Vegas or Macau.
They attract about a million visitors a year and earn a modest profit of 3.8 million euros ($4.9 million) from more than half a billion euros in revenues.
Last year, the Netherlands as a whole attracted more than 11 million visitors. The largest Dutch city Amsterdam, famous for its canals, cannabis-selling coffee shops and world-class museums, welcomes more than five million visitors a year.
Visits to Holland Casino's 14 different venues are on a par with those who go to see the house where Anne Frank wrote about hiding out from the Nazis during World War Two, but well behind the kind of footfall that the Van Gogh Museum enjoys.
Franssen said he expects local arcade operators, British and U.S. companies to be interested in the sale, but declined to estimate the value of the casino business.
In the face of a weak economy and lower consumer spending, Holland Casino said this week it would cut about 10 percent of its workforce over the next two years to save 50 million euros a year in costs.
($1 = 0.7733 euros) (Reporting by Sara Webb, editing by Paul Casciato)

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Inaction on Hill seen as jackpot for online-gambling states - Washington Times

Inaction on Hill seen as jackpot for online-gambling states - Washington Times


Inaction on Hill seen as jackpot for online-gambling states

Months after D.C. lawmakers repealed a measure that would have allowed first-in-the-nation online gambling on home computers and at select sites in the shadow of Capitol Hill, several states are forging ahead with online games of chance while a harried Congress remains unlikely to pass a federal bill that would regulate the practice.
The push to introduce online-gambling legislation as a source of revenue —or protect those who play wagered games on offshore websites — has gathered steam in the year since the U.S. Justice Department declared that the Wire Act of 1961 prohibits Internet gambling only on sports. The legal opinion, a reversal of the government’s position, opened the door to online gambling via state lottery systems even though it was intended to address whether Illinois and New York could use out-of-state transaction processors to sell lottery tickets to adults within their borders.
Since the Justice Department issued its opinion, “at least seven states — California, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Mississippi and New Jersey — have introduced legislation authorizing forms of Internet gaming in their states,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many bills are pending or have died in committee, but Delaware authorized forms of online gambling in June.
“The whole dynamic changed Dec. 23 of last year,” Frank Fahrenkopf Jr., president of the American Gaming Association, said of the release of the Justice Department opinion. “It has set the stage that, if Congress doesn’t act quickly, it will be the largest expansion of gambling in the nation’s history.”
His association supports a draft bill from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, that would make online gambling illegal — except for Internet poker. The card game has a long tradition in the United States, and participants play against one another and not the house, Mr. Fahrenkopf said.
Yet the bill faces an uphill battle in a deadlocked Congress that is grappling with the best way to avoid the “fiscal cliff” of automatic tax increases and spending cuts at the start of next year. Both senators told National Journal in November that they would like to act on the gambling proposal, but acknowledged the stark challenges of enacting legislation amid more pressing issues.
As lawmakers hash it out on Capitol Hill, approaches to gambling in the D.C. region — either through online gambling or bricks-and-mortar casinos —reflect the spectrum of debate across the country. States are using wagered games to quench their thirst for revenue or, conversely, thwarting attempts to use gambling as a way to balance the budget.
Maryland voters approved hotly contested Question 7 on the Nov. 6 ballot, authorizing the state to open table games at five existing and planned casinos and to build a sixth casino in Prince George’s County. National Harbor, located along the Potomac River just south of the Capital Beltway, is considered to be the most likely site for the new casino.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said on WTOP-103.5 FM radio on Tuesday that he is not concerned about Maryland’s table games “having a bad impact” on the Old Dominion and signaled that his state would not go all in on games of chance.
“That’s a choice that Maryland has made,” Mr. McDonnell told the station. “That’s not how we’ve expanded revenue in Virginia.”
In the District, council members Marion Barry, Ward 8 Democrat, and Jack Evans, Ward 2 Democrat, introduced a bill in September to establish a 23-member citizens commission “to investigate the economic and social feasibility of implementing various forms of legalized gambling” in the city. Mr. Evans said the bill likely will die in committee when the council term expires at the end of the year.
Besides Maryland’s new offerings, West Virginia touts the Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races,roughly an hour-and-a-half drive from the nation’s capital. Mr. Evans said it is unclear whether the neighboring casinos draw away revenue or bring in tax dollars through increased tourism to the region.
“That’s the purpose of the study,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s a positive or a negative.”
D.C. Council members in February repealed an “i-gaming” statute that passed as part of a broader budget bill in December 2010. Its path to law caused critics to question why it was not fully vetted as stand-alone legislation with public hearings.
The city lawmaker who pushed online gambling in the District, Michael A. Brown, at-large independent, repeatedly warned that the federal government may step in and regulate the practice before local governments could set up their own systems. The prospect of that is on the table, but no one is betting the house on the bill’s passage.
“We’re an industry that depends on luck,” Mr. Fahrenkopf said. “And we’re going to have to be lucky to get this done during the lame-duck session.”


Read more: Inaction on Hill seen as jackpot for online-gambling states - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/27/congress-inaction-could-be-jackpot-for-gambling-st/#ixzz2DWJ52mBI
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