Featured Articles Archive - Page 717

Betfair Ready to Move forward Following Approval in Tasmania

Tasmania's Legislative Council voted unanimously on Nov. 24 to pass the Gaming Control Amendment (Betting Exchange) Bill, effectively making Tasmania Australia's first state to adopt a regulatory framework for betting exchanges. The passage of the law represents the final hurdle for British betting exchange Betfair, which has been lobbying for months to pass the legislation...read more

Gambling: Give Yourself a Hand

After investing millions of research dollars into developing a wireless hand-held device for bond and securities traders, executives from Cantor Fitzgerald LP, a New York-based financial services company, realized the technology could be applied to other businesses. Nevada casino customers may soon be using the device to gamble outside of traditional gaming areas. Through lobbying efforts this past summer, Cantor Fitzgerald pushed Nevada to become the first state to approve the use of wireless, hand-held gaming devices. Conceivably, state lawmakers paved the way for blackjack, roulette, poker and slot machine customers to wager in public areas beyond the casino, such as restaurants, lounges, retail areas, convention and meeting rooms, and swimming pools. The Nevada Gaming Control Board is writing the regulations that would make wireless hand-held gaming a reality...read more

Heightened Awareness

Although the U.S. Department of Justice insists that online gambling is illegal, an estimated 12.5 million Americans gamble over the Internet, representing about 80 percent of global online gambling traffic. The American public has been generally uninformed about the peculiar legal status of online gambling until this Sunday when the popular investigative journalism television show 60 Minutes broadcast a segment titled "I-Gaming: Illegal and Thriving" exploring the topic. "...read more

Rebecca's Recommendations - November 23, 2005

Happy Thanksgiving! I decided to send out my newsletter one day early so you can check it out while bombed off 19 glasses of wine and close to comatose after consuming a 3,000+ calorie meal. On that note, I think you should visit both Jackpots in a Flash and Mummy's Gold to take advantage of their Turkey Day promos: Jackpots in a Flash is running an "Off the Hook" Thanksgiving promotion until Sunday, November 27th...read more

Boyd Gaming Thinking Fewer Is Better

Boyd Gaming Corp. officials believe a recent one-day seminar geared toward its suppliers broke new ground in helping vendors gain insight into how they can better provide goods and services to the company's 12 Nevada casinos, which will include the $600 million South Coast in late December. At the same time, Boyd Gaming hopes it can help suppliers better target their products and, at the same time, provide an avenue so that larger companies can team up with smaller, locally owned businesses. "This was a way for us to educate suppliers about our business, and it hopefully gave them some strategic direction on how they can better serve us and we can better serve them," Rick Darnold, Boyd's vice president of strategic sourcing, said during the one-day conference held last week at the Stardust. Boyd Gaming invited 116 vendors to take part in the seminar, in which they were given an overview of the company by Boyd Gaming President Keith Smith, and some insight into Boyd's current and future procurement developments. Darnold said the attendees represented $155 million in annual Boyd Gaming spending by Nevada casinos...read more

No Deal with PartyGaming - Empire Would Rather Sue than Sel

The growing conflict between PartyGaming and its holdout skin, Empire Online, reached a boil today, with Empire rejecting Party's acquisition bid and a possible lawsuit looming. The rejected offer came in at 60p per share, which would value the company at about £175 million (US$300 million). Negotiations started at the beginning of the month with an informal offer that would have reportedly valued Empire at about £400 million ($708 million)--10 percent of the newly formed company that would have emerged from the deal--but lowered its offer as Empire's share price declined steadily during due diligence...read more

Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: Casino Lands New Home

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Review-Journal reporter Howard Stutz and photographer John Locher recently visited the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast region to examine the effect on the gaming industry. This is the last in a weeklong series of articles looking at how the industry and its employees are dealing with the disaster. BILOXI, Mississippi -- When gaming arrived here in 1992, the Caribbean-themed Isle of Capri was the region's first casino barge. Now it will be Mississippi's first land-based casino. Following the destruction from Hurricane Katrina, Isle of Capri will open a temporary casino in late December in the property's convention area. A recently enacted law allows the coastal casinos to conduct gaming 800 feet away from the water's edge. Isle of Capri's 32,500-square-foot floating casino was destroyed by the Aug...read more

Kyl Could Be Vulnerable in '06

The next Congressional elections in the United States are still one year away, but some of the races can already be identified as key battles in the Democrats' hopes of reclaiming Congress. Among them is the fight for the senatorial seat occupied by Arizona Republican Jon Kyl, the man who has attempted to pass prohibitory online gambling legislation in all of the last five legislative sessions. In some ways, the current political climate of the United States is similar to the climate of 1994...read more

Reorganization Approved For Las Vegas Hilton Ownership

NEVADA -- Nevada gaming regulators took less than 15 minutes Thursday to approve a corporate reorganization of the Las Vegas Hilton's ownership in which the property and five other Colony Capital casinos will be situated under the privately held Resorts International banner. The move gives the Colony Capital casinos, located in four American gambling jurisdictions, a greater tool to cross market, said Nick Ribis, who oversees Resorts International. "It gives us the ability operationally and financially to have great flexibility," said Ribis, a former attorney who made a mark on the gaming industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s when he oversaw Donald Trump's Atlantic City casino empire. Ribis said following the Nevada Gaming Commission vote that Resorts International is the largest privately held gaming company...read more

Olympic Sportsbook Is Free to Operate in Jamaica

Jamaica's Betting Gaming and Lotteries Commission was forced to abandon its case against online betting company Olympic Sports Data Services, operator of Olympic Sportsbook (www.thegreek.com), and its managing director, Spiros Athanas, after its main witness failed to show up in court last week. All eight charges against the company have been dropped, and it is free to continue operating its online gambling sites over the Internet. Olympic Sports has been operating online gambling services from the Montego Bay Free Zone since 1996, when it obtained a license to operate a telemarketing agency...read more