Bill C-290 (eliminating the Canadian Criminal Code prohibition against single-event sports betting) is still before the Canadian Senate. My last update on C-290 on Pokerati was here. I also mentioned single-event sports betting in my predictions for Canadian gaming and betting in 2013 at Casino Enterprise Management.
The Senate is at the final stage of debating this bill. The final stage, however, may take some time. I have been told that the measure will not come up for a vote without the votes to pass it, but both sides seem confident that they’ll win out.
As the legal battle involving sports gambling moves to the next round in New Jersey, Delaware continues to experience a payoff from its decision to expand its limited sports lottery involving professional football games.
Now gamblers can bet not only in the state’s three racetrack casinos, but also in 31 restaurants, bars and nightclubs throughout Delaware.
Through 20 weeks, including the National Football League preseason, business is up 42.4 percent for the lottery to $22 million, compared with $15.4 million through the same period last year. And the expansion is not hurting its existing casino business, according to a state lottery official.
“The three casinos are showing no cannibalization and are up an aggregate of $1.2 million themselves, an increase of almost 8 percent,” said Vernon Kirk, director of the Delaware Lottery.
Paul Sexton (no relation to Mike) is a former Full Tilt player accused of running money for an illegal online sports gambling ring. [GPI profile]
A lawyer for a former Cantor Gaming executive charged with four felonies in connection with an illegal bookmaking ring said Thursday he will plead not guilty later this month at his initial court hearing in New York.
Michael Cristalli, a Las Vegas-based lawyer, declined to comment on the charges against his client, Mike Colbert. Colbert was arrested with seven other people in Southern Nevada on Oct. 24 on warrants stemming from an 18-month investigation into illegal bookmaking and money laundering.
He is scheduled to make a court appearance in New York on Nov. 29.
Colbert on Thursday did not speak during a procedural hearing in Las Vegas Justice Court. He is charged with enterprise corruption, conspiracy to operate an illegal gaming enterprise and three counts of money laundering.
Cristalli said Colbert’s next court appearance in Las Vegas is scheduled for Dec. 3. He remains free on $50,000 bail.
Colbert appeared at the hearing with Jerry Branca, Steven Diano [GPI Profile], Joseph Paulk, Paul Sexton and Ian Mandell. Brandt England and Kelly Barsel were in New York for their initial hearings and did not appear in court Thursday.
Cantor Gaming officials on Monday said the company has been working closely with Nevada gaming regulators after the arrest of Mike Colbert, now a former vice president and director of risk management with the Las Vegas-based company.
Colbert was one of eight people arrested Wednesday in Southern Nevada in connection with a nationwide illegal bookmaking operation that generated $50 million in seven months.
Robert Hubbell, a spokesman with Cantor Gaming in New York, said Colbert was no longer an employee with Cantor Gaming. He said to date the company has “found nothing to indicate that (Colbert) was using our system or accounts for wrongdoing.”
“Although the charges were not related to his responsibilities at Cantor Gaming, it is important to note that our account wagering system is designed to prevent misconduct,” Hubbell said in a statement.
“The former employee’s responsibilities with Cantor Gaming had nothing to do with accepting or distributing patron money.”
Colbert on Monday did not speak during his brief initial procedural hearing in Las Vegas Justice Court.
A Nevada gaming regulator said Thursday that the state’s probe into illegal bookmaking and money laundering that led to the arrest of a Cantor Gaming vice president and seven others in Las Vegas includes the sports book operator itself, focusing on possible regulatory violations.
Jerry Markling, chief of enforcement for the Gaming Control Board, said Thursday that investigators in Nevada have been working with the New York City Police Department’s Organized Crime Investigation Division for the past 15 months to unravel a “large-scale bookmaking operation.”
Gaming and legal sources on Wednesday had said the matter did not involve Cantor Gaming and was unrelated to its business in Las Vegas. The company declined comment Thursday on Markling’s statement.
Sports betting will probably never be regulated federally anytime soon.
But industry executives believe that a positive outcome of New Jersey’s court battle to legalize wagering on sports in the Garden State could set the stage for other states to legalize the industry.
“New Jersey’s challenge to (the federal ban) is the best place to start,” said Jeff Burge, chief financial officer with Cantor Gaming. “I expect it will be around in the courts for a while.”
Only four states allow sports betting, and Nevada is the only state where bettors can wager on individual sporting events, from soccer to basketball and football.
In 1992, Congress passed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which banned sports betting in all states except for those that allowed it in some form. The federal law gave New Jersey an extra year to legalize sports wagering, a deadline it failed to meet.
William Hill U.S. has released its rebranded and enhanced mobile betting applications that let gamblers place sports wagers via iPhones, iPads, Blackberry devices and Android smart phones and tablets anywhere in Nevada, a company executive said Thursday.
The betting apps were first designed and released by Leroy’s Horse and Sports Place Inc., whose owner, American Wagering Inc., was acquired by William Hill in 2011 for $18 million. Leroy’s was the first U.S.-based gaming company to have a free sports betting application available in the app store on iTunes.
If California lawmakers pass a controversial gambling measure now under consideration in Sacramento, the Golden State will join New Jersey in a bicoastal effort to overturn a 20-year-old partial federal ban on sports wagering.
The measure would legalize sports betting at licensed gaming establishments such as tribal casinos and racetracks, including those at Del Mar and Santa Anita.
“The bill is still alive,” said Paul Donahue, a consultant for California state Sen. Roderick Wright, D-Inglewood, who authored the measure.
“Wright authored the bill because he believes California residents should be able to wager on sports,” Donahue said. “Another reason was to help the horse racing industry, card rooms, tribal casinos and generate revenue for the state.”
NO FEAR OF COMPETITION
Federal law prohibits sports betting in 46 states. California residents who want to place a bet on sports now must do it illegally or travel to Nevada where it’s legal to operate a race and sport book.
Online sports books and betting exchanges have been among the leading beneficiaries from the rise in popularity of smartphones and tablet computers among consumers, a report released Monday found.
The Juniper Research report finds more than $13 billion in bets, including more than $3 billion in the United Kingdom, were placed via mobile devices worldwide in 2011, a figure expected to reach $45 billion by 2017.
The report, “Mobile Gaming: Casinos, Lotteries & Betting 2012-2017,” notes that most leading sports books last year experienced a dramatic increase in the volume of bets from European, primarily U.K. customers. Nevada is the only state in the United States with legalized mobile and tablet sports wagering.
“Companies such as Ladbrokes, William Hill and Paddy Power are all seeing 40 percent or more of online sports book customers placing bets via a mobile or tablet, with the result that those devices already account for around 20 percent of bets placed,” said Windsor Holden, the report’s author.
In case you hadn’t seen it yet … here’s one of the betting sheets available in the Caesars sportsbooks for morning wagering on WSOP Final Table-days. You’ll notice the rule at the bottom, which says you can’t bet on yourself. And though a Caesars casino should be able to track this via a player’s Total Rewards cards, stopping it from happening seems about as effective as stopping people from using their cell phones in a sportsbook.
Why don’t they offer parlays? That’s where the real money in rigging a couple outcomes would come!
Neato. But I gotta wonder what will be more important in the future — these wagers, or the ability to show live-streaming video with hole cards. And if you can’t have both … what does this mean for the future of betting on skill games like America’s Got Talent?
William Hill PLC, a British land-based and online bookmaker, was recommended on Thursday by state gaming regulators to receive its license to operate three race and sports book companies as well as mobile wagering apps in Nevada.
The recommendation by the three-member Gaming Control Board means William Hill is one-step closer to completing its acquisition of American Wagering Inc., which operates Leroy’s Horse & Sports Place.
The gaming company is also purchasing Brandywine Bookmaking LLC, parent of Lucky’s sports book, and Club Cal Neva Satellite Race and Sports Book division in Northern Nevada. William Hill spent more than $53 million in 2011 to acquire three Nevada companies.
Poker is a sport, the WSOP and their partners at ESPN would like you to believe. Except when it comes to sports betting because that might violate the Wire Act everywhere except in Nevada (and maybe soon New Jersey) … and all of that is at least tangentially wrapped around your ability to bet on “sports” anywhere with Leroy’s app, owned by British bookmaker William Hill … but I digress … this year you can have extra fun at the WSOP by betting on any player who advances to a tournament’s final day, which also gives backers the ability to hedge and/or press their bets on various WSOP horses who make it deep.
Earlier this month, the Nevada Gaming Control Board approved proposition sports betting on almost all events at the 2012 WSOP. Every event except #1, the $500 casino employees NLH champonship … because letting a representative of one casino bet on his or her gambling activity in another casino and hedging that action in yet another casino … well that would just be crazy … and we don’t even need to get into the absolute nuttiness of what might happen if a WSOP exec were to accidentally win a bracelet.
(Watch it live, with hole cards, on just a 30 5 15-minute delay!)
Plausible perceptions of impropriety aside, my best guess is that Nevada regulators are so confident in their ability to prevent collusion, chip dumping, and made-for-Hollywood murder-for-hire that they’re willing to create opportunities for possible malfeasance just so they can show what isn’t happening … and anything else will eventually right itself with the introduction of complex poker derivatives into the game.
When Calvin Ayre got indicted this past week, some were wondering what took so long … because if the DOJ couldn’t nab the brashest of online gambling kingpins (Bodog did sports-betting for chrissakes!) then there had to be a formula — a legal-enough way to run an online gambling empire while steering clear of America’s internet police.
Stu notes that the investigation leading to Bodog’s shutdown wasn’t singular in scope, and asks who might be next on the DOJ’s hit-list. The answer to that question, I believe, is in the indictment itself — and though they don’t name any magazine or website by brand, the DOJ does reveal that after more than five years of investigation they consider certain media part of a criminal conspiracy to facilitate illegal online gambling.
6.Through these communications, members of the conspiracy caused the media reseller to create and execute an advertising campaign to increase the participation by gamblers in the United States on the BODOG.com website.
7. Through these communications, members of the conspiracy caused the media reseller to send invoices to BODOG ENTERTAINMENT GROUP S.A., d/b/a BODOG.com. These invoices represented the costs and fees for the creation and execution of the advertising campaign.
8. Members of the conspiracy caused funds to be sent by wire from accounts located outside the United States to accounts located in the United States to satisfy the invoices sent by the media reseller. These wire transfers totaled more than $42 million during 2005 through 2008.
Not so pokery but when you think about kinda-sorta it really is … Nevada Gaming put out their latest sports betting data on Super Bowl wagers, showing $94 million bet in Nevada’s 184 sportsbooks — significant growth over previous year(s) … with the house actually finishing $5 million on the upside (suckers) this go-round. Though GOPers who just rolled through Las Vegas might want to believe otherwise … some economists (aka my old roommate Sang, who happens to be uber-conservative but otherwise really smart) believe this could be yet another indicator of Vegas recovery, fortuitous for a national economy likely to follow.
Though I’m sure plenty will disagree with the above analysis, I’ll take the upward Super Bowl trend for Nevada sports books as a win.
Livefeed @ Congress | “iGaming: Is There A Safe Bet?” | http://energycommerce.house.gov/
The House Energy and Commerce Committee will be holding a hearing Oct. 25 called “iGaming: Is There A Safe Bet?” at 10:30AM EST in the Rayburn House Building RM 2123. Details of this hearing (and witness list – ty to @WriterJen for pointing this out) may be found on the Committee website -> here.
As the legal battle involving sports gambling moves to the next round in New Jersey, Delaware continues to experience a payoff from its decision to expand its limited sports lottery involving professional football games.
A Nevada gaming regulator said Thursday that the state’s probe into illegal bookmaking and money laundering that led to the arrest of a Cantor Gaming vice president and seven others in Las Vegas includes the sports book operator itself, focusing on possible regulatory violations.
Sports betting will probably never be regulated federally anytime soon.
