888 pays Gibraltar for VIP mess
888 pays the price, Wynn hands back Maryland license, Italy’s reforms, Aristocrat’s hack, Mickelson bets +More.
Good morning. On today’s agenda:
888 pays £2.9m for Middle East VIPs misdemeanors.
WynnBet gives up unused license in Maryland.
Italy’s parliament approves plans to reform the gambling sector.
Aristocrat employees’ personal data stolen.
Mickelson denies ‘Miracle of Medinah’ bets.
The waves would lash about us.
Cleaning up
888 reveals payment to the Gibraltar regulator for the Middle East VIP scandal that cost the job of the previous CEO.
Paying the price: 888 said during this week’s H1 earnings call it has paid a regulatory settlement of £2.9m to the Gibraltar Gambling Commission related to the issues it revealed at the start of the year with its Middle Eastern customer base.
Recall, 888 suspended its Middle Eastern-based client base after an internal compliance review uncovered significant AML and KYC failures.
The company said at the time that “best practices have not been followed” but claimed the deficiencies were “isolated to this region only”.
Former CEO Itai Pazner resigned on the day the news broke.
Lord John Mendelsohn, acting executive chair at 888, told investors on Tuesday that the company had taken “swift and comprehensive action to rectify these and notify the regulator”.
He added that 888 had since “worked closely” with the regulator to ensure full compliance going forward.
“The Gibraltar regulator has been complimentary about the proactive swift and robust remedial actions we have taken and our new governance structure to identify and prevent any failings is working well,” he added.
Under pressure: More recently, the company has also been under pressure in the UK after the Gambling Commission put the company under a licensing review due to the potential for the FS Gaming group of investors installing former Entain CEO Kenny Alexander as CEO. The move failed largely due to concerns over the current HMRC investigation into Entain’s previous activities in Turkey (when it traded under the name GVC).
Mendelsohn said he hoped the UKGC review would be completed “at some point during the course of this year”.
“But it really does depend on the Gambling Commission’s view of the external issues that we are being judged on and what our approaches to them are.”
“It's not a matter that’s looking at any of our particular operations,” he added.
“It's really about the responsibility of the board to ensure the core licensing objectives, which the Gambling Commission is charged to ensure are dealt with adequately, and our performance in relation to those.”
Tail to tell: Asked about the 5% of 888’s revenues that still comes from dotcom markets, chief strategy officer Vaughan Lewis indicated 888 would maintain its positions in such markets in the medium to long term.
“We wouldn’t expect that 5% to change much, looking forward,” he told analysts. “We’re certainly not looking to exit more markets.”
“And we do see these as attractive long-tail markets [which provide] nice incremental cash flow to generate incremental returns from our asset base,” he added.
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Wynn fallout
WynnBet has handed back its unused license in Maryland.
Retreat: Having announced its departure from eight states late last week, the regulator in Maryland confirmed this week WynnBet had handed back its license first awarded in December last year having never launched in the state.
John Mooney, director of regulatory oversight at the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency, told commissioners there were no additional details at this time but that the authorities would work with the company on steps necessary to relinquish its mobile sports betting license.
Wynn announced significant pullback in its online ambitions late last week, saying it would be ending operations in Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, New Jersey, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
It will maintain its operations in Nevada and Massachusetts, where it has a land-based presence, and is keeping Michigan and New York under review.
According to Earnings+More, it accompanied the news of the market departures with a series of redundancies in its interactive division.
North America notebook
North Carolina: State Senate leader Phil Berger said no decision had been made over the authorization of up to four new casinos. Berger said the plan is to include measures for further gambling legalization in the state Budget rather than pursue passage of a separate bill that would go through committees and hearings.
He added the legislature would pass a Budget bill by mid-September at the earliest.
House speaker Tim Moore said there’s a decent amount of support for the Senate-backed proposal within the House GOP caucus.
Italian shake-up
Italy’s parliament has approved plans to reform the country’s gambling sector, with proposals to update tax duties and bring in new player harm guidance in the works.
Quando, quando, quando: The Ministry of Economy and Finance said on August 7 a panel of legal and tax experts will oversee the next steps, coordinated by the head of gaming at the Agency of Customs and Monopolies (ADM) regulator. It aims to have a draft of the ‘Tax Delegation Law’ sent to the Treasury by September 20, with hopes the law will enter force in the next two years.
Gambling venue licenses will be granted by the state under the new proposals, and distance laws, which vary around Italy, will be ironed out.
Reduced stake limits and winnings caps are likely, with betting on young adult sport to be outlawed.
Tweaking: The reform plan comes on the back of tweaks to laws concerning online gaming, gaming machines, betting and bingo concessions, which will stay in effect up to December 31, 2024. Italy has failed three times previously to overhaul its gambling regulation due to political instability.
European notebook
Norway: The Norwegian Gambling Authority (NGA) has told operators Hillside Sports (bet365) and ComeOn! to end their operations in Norway. Similar orders have been given to Kindred Group and Betsson, both of which have appealed. Both Hillside and ComeOn! are licensed in Malta.
The NGA said that ComeOn! and four of its associate websites are in Norwegian, use Norwegian area codes and have Norwegian language customer service.
The regulator said bet365 had a website tailored to Norwegian players, Norwegian customer support and guidance for specifically Norwegian deposit and withdrawal options.
The sites are available through Norwegian-language affiliates, the regulator said.
Kindred’s appeal will go to court for review before September 1, according to the NGA.
Aristocrat hacked
Some Aristocrat employees have had personal data stolen following a cyberattack earlier this year.
Stop the steal: In a statement, the company said the attack took place around June 1, when a newly identified vulnerability in MOVEit, a third-party file sharing software it used, was compromised. Data nabbed included personal information of Aristocrat employees.
Some of the information was reportedly published online.
The operator has offered affected employees complimentary credit monitoring and identity theft protection services, it said.
Earlier this year, the Australian business pulled the launch of a New South Wales cashless gaming trial after noting a cyberattack on the network of Banktech, the tech company overseeing cashless gaming operations.
Mickelson denial
Golfer Phil Mickelson has denied placing bets on the outcome of the 2012 Ryder Cup following allegations made by a former gambling associate in a forthcoming memoir.
Juicy lie: In a statement distributed to the media, Mickelson scotched claims by professional US gambler Billy Walters that the six-time major winner tried to place a $400,000 bet on the 2012 Ryder Cup in which he was playing.
The revelations were made in an excerpt of Walter’s new memoir Gamble: Secrets from a Life at Risk, published on Thursday.
The pair were close until Walters was accused of insider trading in 2017, at which point their friendship soured.
The sports bettor also claimed Mickleson has placed bets worth more than $1bn during his playing career.
In his statement, Mickelson strongly denied betting on the Ryder Cup 11 years ago, when Europe made an incredible final-day fightback to win what was called the “Miracle of Medinah”.
“I never bet on the Ryder Cup,” Mickelson said. “While it is well known that I always enjoy a friendly wager on the course, I would never undermine the integrity of the game.”
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ASA slap
Bet365 is the latest firm to have been found to fall short of the ASA’s standards on appealing to children.
No hiding place: The Advertising Standards Authority said its AI-assisted Active Ad Monitoring system, which proactively searches social media for ads that might break the rules, had once again notified the authority of a bet365 ad, which is the latest to have breached the rules on having a strong appeal to children.
The body found a social media message that featured a video clip of former Arsenal midfielder Granit Xhaka, which had been produced by Sky Sports, broke its rules.
Bet365 said the ad had only been served to those over-25 and Twitter said it had received no complaint.
But the ASA said the posting would have only been acceptable if it had been confined to a platform where all under-18s were excluded.
The AI-assisted ad monitoring system similarly flagged a short series of Ladbrokes tweets featuring tennis players as constituting marketing to children.
Australia notebook
Victoria: The Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission has charged Australia-listed BlueBet with 43 counts of illegal advertising that, if found guilty, could result in a fine of A$1m. The Commission found that BlueBet displayed improper gambling advertisements at five freeway locations in Melbourne’s west for two weeks in August and September last year.
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