Nambling Notes - March 26, 2003

UK Tidbit -- In response to the National Lottery going online with its Instant Win games, Ladbrokes has upped the jackpot for its "Balls" game to £1 million. The game is a mixture of a lottery and fixed-odds game and previously had a top prize of £100,000. As an additional competitive measure, Ladbrokes is publicizing the fact that 95 percent of the revenue from the game goes back to consumers as prize money, where the National Lottery only returns 50 percent of the take.

News From Down Under -- The New Zealand Herald reported today that an insider at Australia's Centrebet is saying that the online gambling operation, which is a part of Jupiters, could be sold by the middle of June. Jupiters is selling Centrebet because Jupiters is being purchased by Tabcorp, and unloading the Centrebet was a condition for the sale.

Names and Faces -- SureFire Commerce, an electronic payments company, announced the appointment of three new board members: Tommy Boman, who is retired and was most recently the vice chairman of IMS International; Klaus Rehnig, who is the chairman of the board of EBS Holding; and Markus Braum, the managing director of WireCard AG, a European payment processor.