News In Brief: November 11-November 15, 2024

LiveScore is to exit the Dutch market, citing an impending tax hike.

The Malta-based company announced that its LiveScore Bet product would cease operations on November 29.

In a statement, the company directly cited a planned tax increase to 37.8 percent of gross gambling revenue.

“Unfortunately, the planned tax increase means that this market is no longer viable commercially,” said LiveScore Group CEO Sam Sadi.

Other Dutch exits in recent weeks include Flutter-owned Tombola and Netherlands-based lottery operator Novomedia, which shut down its live casino games.

The Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC) announced Wednesday (November 13) an official seal of approval for online sports-betting operators, designed to allow consumers to distinguish between licensed and regulated operators and illegal, offshore sites.

The MGC developed and adopted the official seal, which each licensed operator is required to include on their digital platforms beginning this month. Massachusetts currently licenses seven online platforms. 

The deal will indicate to consumers that the platform is licensed and regulated by the commission.

“The MGC has spent considerable efforts ensuring that the operators licensed in the Commonwealth share our values and are committed to consumer protections and responsible gaming,” said commissioner Eileen O’Brien.

“Massachusetts residents who choose to gamble on sports deserve to know their data, personal and financial information are protected, and only the legal marketplace offers those protections,” O’Brien said in a statement. “By locating this seal, users will be able to easily identify a legal sportsbook from an illegal operator.”

New Zealand’s government has announced it will allow up to 15 licensees in a proposed regulated online gambling market.

Internal affairs minister Brooke van Velden said on Wednesday (November 13) that a new online gambling bill is being prepared for the domestic market that will “channel” customers away from offshore websites and “towards up to 15 licensed operators”.

Van Velden said restrictions in the bill will include “prohibiting advertising that appeals to children, requiring online gambling operators to have an acceptable age verification system, and introducing fines of up to NZ$5m [$2.9m] for operators that break the law".

“Further regulations will be developed on the detailed rules around advertising, as well as harm minimisation and consumer protection requirements,” she said in a statement.

“This is the same approach used in the existing Gambling Act and will give us more flexibility to adjust the regulations where necessary.”

Van Velden said the regulated market will be up and running in early 2026 following public feedback at the committee stage and passage of the bill.

The government first confirmed plans for a regulated online gambling space in July, but van Velden said only that the market would be open to a “limited number” of operators.

India’s west coast state of Goa has confirmed it will host the nation’s first fully online lottery, which will launch on Monday (November 18).

The Great Goa Games lottery will hold its first draw on November 24, and will issue a top prize of more than 500m rupees ($6m), the Times of India reported on Tuesday. 

The Rhiti Sports and Dusane Infotech joint venture has been “finalised” to operate the paperless lottery, India’s first, according to Narayan Gad, the head of Goa’s small savings and lotteries directorate.

Rhiti Sports founder Arun Pandey told online business news portal Mediabrief.com in early October that Great Goa Games was set to launch, but Goa’s government did not confirm issuance of the licence until this week.

Pandey told the Times of India that the lottery will have a 50 percent return to player rate and improve transparency and reliability, especially compared with popular paper lotteries licensed in a minority of India’s states and Union Territories.

A website carrying the title Great Goa Games is online but had no content at publication time.

Members of Brazil’s Senate have formally established a special investigatory commission (CPI) to evaluate the country’s currently unregulated online betting market and consider potential legislative reforms.

The CPI was formed on Tuesday (November 12), with Senator Soraya Thronicke from the state of Mato Grosso do Sul elected to the key role of rapporteur for the commission.

Members of the CPI also approved Thronicke’s ten-page work plan that will govern the panel’s activities over the course of the next 130 days.

According to that agenda, senators intend to investigate financial transactions, potential risks of money laundering and whether betting platforms comply with Brazilian consumer protection laws.

They also plan to propose new regulations on responsible gambling and advertising, and to govern the use of AI by betting operators.

During Tuesday’s brief meeting, Thronicke told fellow senators that the Senate investigation was unusual because it was welcomed by Brazil’s federal government, including by the newly established Secretary of Prizes and Bets within the Ministry of Finance.

Thronicke said one of the Senate panel’s main concerns was “the mental health of the Brazilian people, because this is a silent addiction”.

Aristocrat Leisure will sell its Plarium Global mobile gaming division to Sweden’s Modern Times Group for approximately $820m, as the Australian gaming company focuses on real-money gaming. 

The divestment of Plarium allows Aristocrat to focus on regulated gaming and slot machines. The sale of Plarium by Aristocrat’s Pixel United division follows a strategic evaluation of the company’s business announced in May. 

Aristocrat on Tuesday (November 12) said it would receive $600m upfront, with another $20m to follow in April 2026, as well as $200m subject to the achievement of certain financial targets between 2025 and 2028.

“With the expanded Aristocrat Interactive business now sitting alongside Aristocrat Gaming and our market leading mobile social casino business, we are increasingly focused on opportunities to lean into Aristocrat’s strengths in regulated gaming content and social slots,” Trevor Croker, Aristocrat’s CEO and managing director, said.

Acquired in October 2017, Plarium generated an internal rate of return in the mid-teens during the period of Aristocrat’s ownership. 

Aristocrat said its strategic review of Big Fish Games, another brand within Pixel United, remains ongoing and it intends to take a goodwill impairment charge of approximately $110m in relation to Big Fish Games, excluding the Big Fish Social Casino assets.

As lawmakers have gathered in Baton Rouge for the third special session of 2024, one legislator is urging his colleagues to consider raising the tax rate on online sports betting to 51 percent. 

House Bill 22, authored by Republican state Representative William Wilder III, would bring Louisiana in line with New York that also levies a 51 percent tax on sports-betting revenue. Louisiana currently has a 15 percent tax on GGR on online sports-betting operators.

The bill has been assigned to the House Ways and Means Committee, which has scheduled a hearing on the measure for Wednesday (November 13).

In addition, Wilder’s bill would eliminate promotional credits to players. Currently, promotional play is permitted and credits can be deducted from operators’ tax calculations. 

Lawmakers are scheduled to adjourn the special session no later than November 25, with the 2025 regular session set to convene on April 14.

Endeavor Group Holdings confirmed it has agreed to sell OpenBet and IMG Arena to OB Global Holdings in a management buyout for approximately $450m. 

The management buyout is being led by Endeavor CEO Ariel Emanuel and includes several OpenBet executives, including CEO Jordan Levin. The deal will be financed through a mix of cash and debt. 

Endeavor said it will continue to market IMG Arena for sale to third parties during the sign-to-close period and after closing. OpenBet works with more than 200 market operators worldwide, including FanDuel, BetMGM, ESPN BET, Loto Quebec and Paddy Power. 

Following the close of the transaction, Levin will continue in his role as CEO.

“This management buyout allows us to continue executing our vision for increased market expansion and product innovation,” Levin said in a statement. 

“Our group is extremely confident in OpenBet’s future considering the premium product offering, superior talent, and solid foundation we already have in place following a strong period of business growth.”

Australian wagering giant Tabcorp Holdings has suffered another substantial fine over compliance breaches, this time penalised A$262,920 ($171,600) by the national online gambling regulator for accepting hundreds of in-play bets on tennis.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said in a statement on Wednesday (November 13) that Tabcorp accepted 854 in-play bets across 69 matches over a six-month period in 2023.

Tabcorp told ACMA investigators that a “bug” in its technical systems allowed the bets from April that year, violating the Interactive Gambling Act 2001, but that this was not addressed until October.

“Tabcorp is a major wagering operator and it is concerning that it took some six months for the system error to be identified and fixed,” ACMA member Carolyn Lidgerwood said in the statement.

ACMA said its penalty was mitigated by Tabcorp voiding all implicated bets to ensure that customers incurred no losses and that the company “did not profit from the errors”.

Tabcorp must report back to ACMA on revised controls to prevent or minimise the occurrence of in-play bets online, the statement said.

Wednesday’s fine is the latest regulatory response to a string of high-profile and/or costly compliance failures by Tabcorp, including a previous in-play betting offence in 2021 that resulted in an ACMA warning.

In August, Tabcorp suffered a record A$4.6m fine in Victoria state for systematic breaches, following state fines of A$1m and A$370,000 for disobeying instructions and failing to prevent underage gambling, respectively.

Tabcorp also suffered a fine and legal bills amounting to some A$90m in 2017 after it was investigated by AUSTRAC, the national financial transactions regulator.

Lui Che Woo, founder and chairman of Macau casino operator Galaxy Entertainment Group, “passed away peacefully” on Thursday (November 7), according to a company filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday. He was 95.

Born in Guangdong Province, Lui moved to Hong Kong as a child and founded construction group K. Wah Company in the 1950s before expanding into property development, global hospitality investments and finally gambling when Macau ended its Stanley Ho-controlled monopoly in the early 2000s.

Despite having no gambling pedigree, Lui’s Galaxy Entertainment Group snared one of only three concessions awarded by the Macau authorities, with Las Vegas Sands (LVS) signed on as its management partner.

But that relationship soured, forcing Macau policymakers to grant the US company its own “sub-concession”, paving the way for a six-concession market with Galaxy and LVS leading the pack.

Galaxy’s day-to-day operations at its two casino complexes have been largely supervised by Lui's eldest son, deputy chairman and de facto CEO Francis Lui, and Galaxy said on Thursday that Lui's death “will not have any impact on the operations of the group”.

In recent years Lui was more visible for philanthropic work, charities and donations to universities in mainland China, Macau, Hong Kong and the US.

In 2014, Lui played a prominent role in support of Beijing during pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, chiding student protesters and joining a Hong Kong delegation that consulted Chinese President Xi Jinping.

French gambling trade group AFJEL has welcomed the government's decision to launch a consultation on whether or not online casino games should be regulated.

Plans to insert an amendment that would have allowed online casino to become licensed in France was quickly removed after backlash from the country's land-based casino industry.

AFJEL said it would engage with the government's three working groups and said that despite a "tight turnaround" it was confident of a positive outcome.

"Far from the media posturing of the last few days, the responsible statements [on the launch of the consultation] all converged to recognise that the status quo was no longer acceptable. This is an important first step, we must now construct a response that is up to the challenges. The precise timetable and the firm will expressed by the minister this morning oblige us collectively," said Nicolas Béraud, president of AFJEL.

A federal judge in Little Rock has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday (November 12) after a constitutional filing by Cherokee Nation Entertainment asking for an injunction to block the loss of its Arkansas casino license.

Cherokee Nation holds the Pope County casino license. That license is set to be rescinded effective November 15, after Arkansas voters passed a constitutional amendment last week blocking the casino that was planned in the county.

Issued 2, as approved by voters, also now requires any new casinos in Arkansas to receive the support of local county voters before they are licensed. Arkansas voters passed a casino amendment in 2018 that allow four casinos in the state, including in Pope County.

While the other three casinos are in operation, the Pope County gaming license was delayed due to a number of lawsuits between the Cherokee Nation and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, which operates a casino near the Arkansas border. 

“The amendment’s intent and consequence is to revoke (Cherokee Nation’s) casino license,” according to the lawsuit. “The amendment revokes the license without compensation, without public purpose, and without notice.”

Cherokee Nation contends that this constitutes a violation of the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution and the company's “substantive due process rights”.

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin called the lawsuit “baseless” and told the Associated Press he was prepared to vigorously defend the state. 

The Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission (NTRWC) has fined Australian corporate bookmaker PlayUp Interactive over insufficient problem gambling protections, the commission’s first penalty since its formation in July.

The NTRWC on October 24 fined PlayUp A$5,508 ($3,630), or 20 percent of the maximum penalty, for lacking procedures to “allow staff to detect and assist customers in a timely manner, who may be experiencing problems with gambling”, according to the decision.

The commission found that PlayUp complied with all other legal requirements in the case, in which a self-identified problem gambler was contacted by a new client manager and offered a deposit match bonus before going on a 24-hour betting spree.

The case is one of two probes that was announced in October, with the second clearing Entain of a complaint against subsidiary Ladbrokes.

The NTRWC’s predecessor regulator had processed 15 complaints between January 1 and June 30, but since the new commission's formation no cases had been listed for almost four months.

The NTWRC told Vixio GamblingCompliance on October 21 that it had “prepared decisions in a number of matters … [and] they are yet to be finalised due to the time it takes to obtain comments and consider them”.