World Casino News

ElectraWorks Limited hit with Gambling Commission fine

In the United Kingdom, the Gambling Commission regulator has ordered prominent online casino operator ElectraWorks Limited to pay a fine of £350,000 ($488,640) for repeatedly breaching advertising standards when it came to promoting ‘free bonuses’ on its websites. According to a press release from the Gambling Commission, the Gibraltar-headquartered operator was warned by the Advertising Standards Authority Limited in August of 2016 about an advertisement on its United Kingdom-licensed Bwin.com domain that purportedly offered a ‘free bonus’. The regulator declared that it had cautioned ElectraWorks Limited about the same site featuring such an advert a week later with the firm subsequently removing the offending instance. The Gambling Commission declared that these instances had breached a rule that all of its licensees must abide by the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice and the Committee of Advertising Practice codes when it comes to the utilization of terms such as ‘bonus’ and free bet’. Despite this occurrence, the Gambling Commission explained that it discovered similar breaches on ElectraWorks Limited-owned sites CasinoLasVegas.com, PartyPoker.com, SCasino.com, NobleCasino.com, CasinoKing.com and PartyCasino.com in April before June saw the same six domains repeat the infractions while CasinoLasVegas.com went on to chalk up a third infringement in August. The Gambling Commission stated via a second release (pdf) that the 14 offending advertisements had not stated the ‘significant limitations and qualifications’ attached to the bonuses ‘despite there being space to do so’ while it moreover cautioned ElectraWorks Limited for failing to ensure that the person in charge of its marketing duties had held ‘the requisite personal management license’. “This fine should serve a warning to all gambling businesses that we will not hesitate to take action against those who mislead consumers with bonus offers or fail to ensure they are correctly licensed,” read a statement from Richard Watson, a member of the Gambling Commission’s Business Plan Programme Board.

more info...

Las Vegas Sun Stories: Gaming

With ruling on national sports betting due, will Las Vegas ever be the same?

Back in the September of his years, Frank Sinatra would take the mic and command this little lounge stage. Still the headliner of all headliners at The Sands, four miles down The Strip, Sinatra would escape to this neighborhood joint, the ...

more info...

Casino Listings

Kindred Releases 2017 Financial Results

Internet gaming firm the Kindred Group has revealed their full year and fourth quarter 2017 financial results, noting a large climb in revenues.

more info...

World Casino News

MGM Resorts opens $3.4 billion MGM Cotai

Having sent out a media invitation on Feb. 6, MGM Resorts International Holdings, Ltd, parent company to MGM China Holdings Ltd (2282:Hong Kong), on Tuesday held the grand opening for its HKD27-billion (US$3.45-billion) MGM Cotai in advance of the Chinese New Year holiday. The important festival falls on Friday, February 16 this year and during the period the casino market in Macau typically sees a spike in gambling. Situated in the Chinese-controlled territory of Macau, the Cotai property, the second for MGM and its largest investment in Macau to date, will bring the company’s overall gaming table count in what is the world’s biggest gaming hub, to 552, an increase of 29 percent. The new resort on the family-friendly Cotai strip will also raise the number of MGM’s hotel rooms in Macau to 1,972, more than tripling the previous count, marking significant growth into hospitality amid uncertainty regarding the renewal process of the company’s casino license that expires in two years, according to the Reuters report. Among the last of the operators to develop on the Coati strip, MGM’s second investment in Macau follows Wynn Resorts Ltd.’s Wynn Palace and Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s Parisian and boasts artwork which includes 28 carpets from the Qing dynasty and a 2,000-seat theatre. Operated by the company’s Macau arm MGM China Holdings, MGM Cotai will reportedly open with approximately 177 mass gaming tables and 200 electronic table games (ETGS), according to analysts, with mostly middlemen set to handle VIP gaming junkets slated to open by the end of Q2 along with the property’s luxury mansion villas, according to Reuters. Having broken ground in February 2013, fully 85 percent of the 3 million square foot development will be dedicated to non-gaming attractions. MGM is one of a half dozen licensed casino operators in the autonomous region on the south coast of China, which is the only place in the country where citizens are permitted to gamble legally. However, along with SJM Holdings, MGM’s license is expected to expire in 2020, while licenses for Wynn Macau, Sands China, Melco Resorts and Galaxy Entertainment are due to expire in the year 2022.

more info...

World Casino News

SG Digital to open Krakow remote development center

After using last week’s ICE Totally Gaming exhibition to unveil its new SG Digital entity, American gaming machine innovator Scientific Games Corporation has now reportedly revealed that its latest subsidiary intends to open a new remote development center in the Polish city of Krakow. According to a press release from Las Vegas-based Scientific Games Corporation published by Casino City Times, the new Polish venue is due to open during ‘the first quarter of 2018’ as SG Digital’s fourth European development hub alongside counterpart offices in Stockholm, Athens and London. Scientific Games Corporation reportedly revealed that the Krakow enterprise will employ at least 100 people and help SG Digital, which consists of the assets it recently purchased from online casino games innovator NYX Gaming Group Limited alongside those of its own SG Interactive subsidiary, to ‘accelerate growth and drive innovation in product development across the group’. “The Krakow opening will be our fourth center in Europe as we accelerate our growth, underpinned by our product-led strategy,” reportedly read a statement from Matt Davey, the recently-named Chief Executive Officer for SG Digital. “The advanced hubs are staffed by leaders in their fields and provide the platform to ensure that SG Digital remains at the forefront of technology in the digital gaming, lottery and sports industry.” Scientific Games Corporation reportedly declared that the ‘product-focused employees’ at its coming Krakow venue are to be responsible for ‘quality assurance, core software development and product innovation’ while Chris Armes, Chief Technology Officer for the new entity, purportedly stated that the coming enterprise ‘underlines our commitment to continuously boost our best-in-class offering’. Armes moreover reportedly explained that the new Krakow office is to be ‘directly aligned with our other European technology hubs’ in order to ‘form a great asset for the SG Digital business unit’. He purportedly described Poland as a having ‘a fantastic reputation when it comes to tech personnel’ due to ‘a well-trained and high-energy talent pool of people’ that offer ‘extensive industry and domain expertise’.

more info...

Casinos & Gaming – Las Vegas Review-Journal

Wynn Resorts board weighing its options, experts say

The board of Wynn Resorts Ltd. is weighing its options in figuring out its next step, experts say.

more info...

Las Vegas Sun Stories: Gaming

MGM opens Macau casino resort as license renewal looms

MGM Resorts is opening a lavish multibillion-dollar casino resort in Macau, in the latest big bet by foreign gambling companies on the Chinese gambling haven ...

more info...

World Casino News

Pennsylvania awards third miniature casino license

In Pennsylvania, last week reportedly saw the firm behind the Mount Airy Casino Resort win the right to open the eastern state’s third miniature casino with the new facility now being planned for a site in central Lawrence County. According to a report from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper, Mount Airy #1 LLC had its bid of almost $21.2 million accepted by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board on Thursday and envisions locating the new enterprise within 15 miles of the city of New Castle and near Pennsylvania’s border with Ohio. “We are happy with their decision and we are going to do all we can to make them feel welcome,” Lawrence County Commissioner Dan Vogler reportedly told the newspaper. The new ‘Category Four’ facility will reportedly be permitted to operate up to 750 slots alongside a maximum of 40 gaming tables in exchange for agreeing to pay a 50% tax on all slot revenues alongside a 14% duty on table takings. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that Mount Airy #1 LLC has become the third firm to receive one of the state’s new miniature casino license after early-January saw a subsidiary of Penn National Gaming Incorporated pay $50.1 million for the right to open a similar facility in York County. This was followed a few weeks later by Baltimore-based The Cordish Companies, which is currently in the process of developing its Live! Hotel and Casino Philadelphia, handing over some $40.1 million for the right to bring a comparable enterprise to Westmoreland County. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board hopes to auction ten new ‘Category Four’ licenses before the end of July featuring minimum $7.5 million bids as a way to help the eastern state fill its bulging $2.2 billion annual budget deficit. The result of wide-ranging gaming legislation signed into law by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf in October, the coming satellite casinos purportedly may not be located within 25 miles of any of Pennsylvania’s twelve existing casinos while local authorities were given the right to opt out of being considered as a home for any of the coming venues.

more info...