Insights Archive

September 10, 2021

Ontario Online Opening Draws Near As Sports-Betting Standards Set

Ontario’s gambling commission has published final standards for online sports betting and internet gaming and confirmed that operators will be able to start the application process to become regulated in the province as soon as Monday.

September 10, 2021

888 Says It's Keen On Keeping William Hill Shops

888 Holdings has affirmed its interest in keeping William Hill’s 1,400 stores, as its chief executive said it had rebuffed approaches to sell them.

September 10, 2021

Finnish Licensing Possible By 2026, Consultant Predicts

A change in political power could see a licensing system introduced in Finland as early as 2026, according to a former Veikkaus Oy VP turned local gambling consultant.

September 10, 2021

DC Lottery Needs Changes To Boost Sports-Betting Revenue

The DC Lottery’s sports-betting product is performing poorly, and the city should consider increasing the tax rate on private operators, as well as other structural changes, to assist the struggling program, according to a new report from D.C.’s independent monitor.

September 10, 2021

News In Brief: September 6-September 10, 2021

Netherlands licensees to be named in late September, Cypriot regulator wants gambling companies to embrace crypto and Japan's Yokohama is officially withdrawn from casino-resort contention.

September 9, 2021

China’s Personal Information Protection Law To Take Effect On November 1

Swingeing fines and the revocation of business permits are the order of the day for China's new data protection law, which stipulates that firms that are guilty of serious offences can pay fines of up to 50m renminbi (US$7.74m), or 5 percent of their annual turnover.

September 9, 2021

Bank Of England Gauges Pandemic’s Effect On Its Payment Systems

The Bank of England has published its Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system and Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS) annual report, which shows that the central bank's payments systems have remained resilient despite the depredations of COVID-19.

September 9, 2021

News In Brief - September 9, 2021

Adrienne Harris is to be the next leader of the New York State Department of Financial Services, while the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Uniswap, a global DeFi (decentralised finance) exchange.

September 9, 2021

Never Fans Of Sports Betting, Professional Athletes Rail About Cyberbullying

As legal sports betting continues to expand across the U.S., the National Football League opens its 2021 season Thursday, but athletes say they fear a new era of betting is helping fuel online hate.

September 9, 2021

888 To Pay £2.2bn For William Hill International

888 Holdings said it has agreed to buy the non-US operations of William Hill from owner Caesars Entertainment for an enterprise value of £2.2bn, including debt.

September 9, 2021

Ukrainian Commission On The Brink

Ukraine's gambling commission is in danger of collapse, with its mandate due to expire at the end of October and legal confusion blocking its renewal.

September 9, 2021

Swedish Trade Group Wants COVID-19 Gambling Restrictions Lifted

The Swedish Trade Association for Online Gambling (BOS) is asking the government to remove COVID-19 related online casino restrictions at the end of the month, in step with the lifting of many other pandemic measures, rather than on November 14.

September 9, 2021

Genius Sports Expects NFL Data Rights Deal To Be Profitable By 2022

Genius Sports executives have said the company’s exclusive partnership with the National Football League will be profitable by next year after questions from analysts regarding the company’s most significant North American sports partnership.

September 8, 2021

Mixed Results For SCA Compliance

Despite progress, various parts of the payments ecosystem in continental Europe have yet to implement strong customer authentication (SCA) fully — and this is also true in the UK.

September 8, 2021

News In Brief - September 8, 2021

Singapore and South Africa are warning the public against Binance. Compliance officers at payments firms ought to be on the lookout for unregulated customers and recipients of payments, such as the denizens of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission's list of unregulated collective investment schemes. Meanwhile, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority is making various previously private pieces of information about firms public.

September 8, 2021

Vietnam Mulls Expanding Football Betting Product, Online Sales

After years of stalling on a request for proposals for a sports-betting monopoly, Vietnam is moving to aggressively expand the number of football competitions permitted for bets, while flagging permission for online sales.

September 8, 2021

Slovenia Unveils Market Opening Draft

Slovenia is set to offer international operators a pathway into its entire gambling market for the first time, as the government unveils plans to offer new concessions and abandon some of its restrictive licensing requirements.

September 8, 2021

Press Council Chides Media For Mislabelled Casinos Austria Ads

The Austrian Press Council has reprimanded two newspapers for running Casinos Austria and Austrian Lotteries articles that should properly have been labelled “paid advertising”, as advertising issues flare up across the continent.

September 8, 2021

Customer Interactions Still Failing, Says UK Commission

The Gambling Commission continues to see operators allowing consumers to gamble potentially harmful amounts with very limited or no customer interaction until a very late stage, a senior official has said.

September 7, 2021

U.S. Charges Four Over $150m Payment-Processing Scam

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged four people in Massachusetts with conspiring to deceive banks and credit card companies into processing more than $150m in credit- and debit-card payments on behalf of merchants involved in prohibited and highly risky businesses, including online gambling, debt collection, debt reduction, prescription drugs and payday lending.

September 7, 2021

Bankers Ask Fed For Maximum Interoperability Between RTP and FedNow

In response to a notice of proposed rulemaking that the U.S. Federal Reserve published in June, the American Bankers Association has asked the regulator to ensure that the Real Time Payments Network becomes as interoperable as possible with its planned real-time gross settlement system. It does so as part of a wider set of comments about the Fed's impending reform of Regulation J.