The online casinos bingo operation of one of the UK’s major gambling groups, Gala Bingo has announced the July launch of a series of new side online games, adding variety to the gaming offering to players.
The Orbis-Wagerworks Mini Games suite consists of three games: Transformers, Battleships and Dungeons and Dragons.
The gambling site already boasts three Mini Games, branded Girls Night Out, Soccer Wives and Hat Tricks, with player chat facilities included to keep things social.
The Poker Players Alliance has given an update on the petition for the legalisation of online poker which forms part of their National Poker Week initative, and advises that so far some 300 428 American poker lovers have added their signatures.
PPA chief John Pappas says that the process is streamlined and takes less than 30 seconds, with those interested entering in their first names, last name, e-mail address, street address, city, state, zip code, and a special authentication code.
The introductory paragraph of the petition affirms: “I am a voter and a fellow poker player asking for your support of my right to play games of skill like poker on the internet.”
The PPA plans to present the petition to President Obama on July 22nd during a Washington DC fly-in by leading poker personalities, also a part of the National Poker Week activities to create awareness of the demand for a more enlightened legislative approach to the legalised online poker.
PPA and other personalities will meet with politicians to push for their support of Congressman Barney Frank’s HR 2267, a bill to regulate and license online gambling in the United States that has already attracted 42 sponsors. The PPA also plans to host a charity poker tournament.
The response to “My Poker Story” - a website that allows players to submit videos explaining why the game is important to them - has also been positive, with personalities like Mike Sexton, Kenna James and Howard Lederer all submitting videos.
The magnitude of Russia’s decision to confine all land gambling to four geographic areas away from main population centres like Moscow and St Petersburg was underlined this week by an article in the St. Petersburg Times.
The newspaper revealed that Moscow is not the only location where the ban will have a profound effect - in St. Petersburg it is expected that 109 land casinos will close on July 1st when the Russian diktaat comes into effect….and that could see up to 10 000 locals out of work.
The St Petersburg Times bases its statistics on data released by the local municipality, which indicates that between 10 000 and 12 000 residents are employed in the gambling industry.
According to estimates from City Hall, 10 000 to 12 000 people in St. Petersburg work in the gaming industry, all of whom will become unemployed under the new rules, said Lidiya Mamon, the head of the Office of Government-Regulated Aspects of the Committee on Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade.
In addition, 127 000 square meters of retail space currently occupied by the casinos will become vacant, and the city will lose at least 3.5 million rubles ($112 000) in tax revenues, or one percent of the local budget.
The gambling laws restrict all gaming activity to four zones located in remote parts of Russia: the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, the Caucasus, the Pacific coast and southwestern Siberia. The restrictions go into effect on July 1, although the head regulator of Russia’s special economic zones said Thursday that the country will not be able to open the gaming zones in less than four to five years.
Mamon said that St. Petersburg will attempt to take up the vacated retail space with shops, offices and restaurants.
BetStopper, the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation’s program to combat underage gambling, will be powered by InternetSafety developed software, the company announced this week.
InternetSafety software is offered as a free tool to Nova Scotia families and is designed specifically to stop underaged persons from gambling online.
The Corporation claims that BetStopper.com is the world’s first online gambling blocking software designed specifically to exclude the underaged, and used InternetSafety.com’s award-winning web filtering technology.
Playtech plc’s chief finance officer Shuki Barak has revealed that the gambling software developer has some ambitious spending plans in its acquisition strategies, with a number of targets in mind that include an as yet unidentified marketing business which could be the subject of a $750 million takeover deal
In an interview with the publication Mergermarket, Barak said that Playtech has a call option on the undisclosed target, based on a 5.5x multiple over annual profits of $500 million. The company holds the option until March 2011.
Commenting that the deal will dwarf Playtech’s $250 million involvement in William Hill Online, Barak said that the company is additionally considering four smaller targets including a hosting provider, a customer services specialist and a payment advisory firm, and is set to seal between 10 and 15 licensing agreements before the end of 2009.
Barak confirmed that Playtech was not interested in troubled operations such as Codere in Spain, preferring to remain as far as possible focused on software development rather than direct operational matters.
“As a pure software supplier we have no intention of going into operations as it would create a conflict of interest,” Barak said. “We could only consider a minority stake investment in a gaming operator, but this is unlikely to happen in the short term.”
Internet sales of UK National Lottery tickets have grown by 31.8 percent over the past decade to GBP 488.2 million, Camelot, which operates the lottery for the British government, reported last week.
The operator revealed that the past year has produced overall ticket sales that are the best in ten years, reaching GBP 5.14 billion, a year-on-year increase of GBP 182.8 million.
In the year to March 31 2009, Camelot completed a major upgrade as it headed for its third contract renewal, and managed to boost awards to charity by GBP 25.8 million when compared to the same period a year ago. Charities received GBP 1.37 billion in grants from the lottery this year.
Dianne Thompson, Chief Executive for Camelot, commented: “This has been an incredibly busy landmark year for Camelot and the National Lottery. The fact that we completed the largest National Lottery upgrade of its kind in record time is testament to the hard work of all Camelot staff and puts us in an excellent position as we begin the third licence and countdown to London 2012 [the Olympic Games in London].
“Over the coming year we will be looking to consolidate our position as the most cost-effective lottery operator in Europe, introducing further innovation to ensure that we continue to deliver for players and the good causes in the next ten years.”
Camelot recently launched a new National Lottery website featuring a redesigned interface and a host of new functions including a game selector tool, dedicated results checker and opt-in alerts service. It announced that it is planning a host of innovations for later this year including a new-look retail play station, further three-dimensional online games and a selection of titles based on well-known television quiz shows.