South Point has become the fourth company to offer a mobile betting app after launching its service Tuesday at five Nevada locations, including four in Las Vegas.
The app, available for the iPhone, iPad, Android and Android tablets, is free to download and resembles the William Hill app that has been available in Nevada for more than a year.
South Point began advertising its app Friday in its sports book. A website is available at nvsportsbooks.com to answer questions gamblers might have.
The app requires a minimum $100 deposit. Out-of-state residents are allowed to sign up and fund accounts, but the device can only be used in Nevada.
The app, which features lines set by South Point, offers consumers the ability to deposit money or collect winnings at four additional properties participating in Nevada Sports Books, including the Cannery, Eastside Cannery, Rampart and the Virgin River casino in Mesquite.
“Our guests have the opportunity to place their sports bets from home, while at South Point at dinner or at the bar,” said Ryan Growney, general manager of South Point. “By adding this new mobile betting application to our sports books offerings, we can showcase a new method of placing bets to sports fans throughout Nevada.”
The app will offer all types of bets except parlay cards or pari-mutuel racing. Cantor Gaming, Station Casinos and William Hill are the other sports book operators to offer a mobile wagering device.
Caesars Entertainment Corp. and MGM Resorts International, two of the largest operators on the Strip, as well as local and regional gaming company Boyd Gaming Corp. have yet to introduce a mobile sports betting app.
Sports fans are wagering thousands of dollars on the performance of professional athletes each day online, and it is all perfectly legal.
Known as daily fantasy sports, the games are part of an exemption to federal law banning online gambling. In daily fantasy sports, winners aren’t determined by the outcome of a single game or the performance of a single player.
Most fantasy competitions — football or baseball — last a season, but more and more players are looking for their daily fantasy fix. Critics argue that turning fantasy sports into a daily competition edges it closer to being a game of chance that’s essentially equivalent to placing a bet at race and sports books in Las Vegas.
“I’m not going to give a legal opinion,” John Kindt, an emeritus professor of business and legal policy at the University of Illinois, said Thursday. “But what I would say is that this was not the intent of Congress when it prohibited online gambling.”
The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 regulated online gambling by prohibiting gambling businesses from knowingly accepting payments in connection with a wager. The law excluded fantasy sports and legal intrastate and inter-tribal gaming.
As New Jersey prepares for its next court hearing on Wednesday over its efforts to legalize sports betting, gaming officials in Canada are urging lawmakers to vote on a bill legalizing Las Vegas-style sports books.
A bill introduced almost two years ago would allow Canadians to wager on a single sporting event at a time. It’s also seen as way to draw U.S. gamblers to casinos just across the border from cities such as Detroit or Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Canada offers a sports lottery in which bettors can parlay three or more games, but single-game betting is illegal under the Canadian criminal code.
“We are like Delaware, which offers parlay cards for sports betting,” Paul Burns, vice president of public affairs with the Toronto-based Canadian Gaming Association, said in a phone interview. “Every sports bettor knows it’s not a great bet.”
Burns said legalizing sports betting would discourage Canadian bettors from wagering on National Hockey League or National Football League games offshore or with illegal bookmakers.
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.
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.
