Insights

As the Massachusetts Gaming Commission prepares to host a public hearing Monday on the state's three casino retail sports-betting licenses, commissioners agreed to set aside some time in an upcoming meeting for a policy briefing on promotional play credits and free bets.

Chris McGinnis named as Playtech’s new chief financial officer, Anthony “Tony” Rodio, chief executive of Great Canadian Entertainment has retired as CEO and a director, Australian casino operator The Star Entertainment Group named two non-executive directors to replenish its board after a series of resignations over compliance failures.

Blackstone selling its stake in two Las Vegas casinos for a huge profit, New York bill to make regulator consider amending racing gambling rules, Ontario bans UFC betting over integrity concerns and Maryland grants initial approval for two online sports-betting operators.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has outlined its key payment objectives, which include a two-year window to implement least-cost routing for card-based transactions on mobile wallets, monitoring of Visa and Mastercard’s buy now, pay later (BNPL) platforms and support for instant cross-border payments.

A digital rupee pilot in India has kicked off today, allowing selected merchants and customers to test person-to-person and person-to-merchant payments in Mumbai and New Delhi.

A group of UK-based researchers examining cryptocurrency gambling sites found none that verified the identities of new players, and 35 percent asked for only an email but no personal information.

Two high-profile reforms of land-based and online gambling in Ontario have come under scrutiny after an Auditor General report criticized the province’s lottery corporation for accepting reduced revenue commitments from private casino operators and the Attorney General faces litigation seeking to upend a new iGaming regulatory regime.

The lower house of Chile’s Congress overwhelmingly approved a motion on Wednesday to prohibit betting advertising and sponsorships around Chilean sports events, although several steps remain in the legislative process before any restrictions would take effect.

The Malta Gaming Authority has cancelled three separate licences belonging to Morpheus Games, eGaming Lab Limited and M-Hub Gaming C4 Limited.

Even with commercial and tribal gaming legal in 42 U.S. states, Americans still spend an estimated $511bn annually gambling via unregulated sportsbooks, offshore websites and so-called skill-based gaming devices, according to a new report by the American Gaming Association.

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) has made its way through the EU’s political institutions. VIXIO speaks to industry experts to explain why companies will need to get ready for an overhaul of their ICT policies.

A subsidiary of Paytm, India’s online payments giant, has had its application to provide payment aggregator and payment gateway services for online merchants put on hold.

One month after the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) discussion paper on bigtech firms’ entry into UK financial services, experts weigh in on risks and warn that it is high time to name a regulator that takes ownership of bigtech oversight.

The UK and Singapore have signed a new memorandum of understanding on fintech collaboration and financial cooperation, building on several major partnerships that have been rolled out since 2016.

In July 2022, the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published Policy Statement 22/9: "A new Consumer Duty Feedback to CP21/36 and final rules" (containing FCA 2022/31 Consumer Duty Instrument 2022), alongside Finalised Guidance 22/5: "Final non-Handbook Guidance for firms on the Consumer Duty", confirming its plans to introduce a Consumer Duty and setting a 12-month period for firms to implement the new rules. This regulatory analysis focuses on what actions need to be taken by payment services providers (PSPs) to be compliant with the new Consumer Duty requirements. It also highlights the timeframe for the implementation of the consumer duty obligations and the FCA’s cost-benefit analysis.

In a recently published incident report, the Reserve Bank of Australia reveals further details of the mid-October widespread outage that crippled the country’s instant payment system and promises to take action to avoid such incidents from happening again.

Australian money laundering watchdog AUSTRAC has sued subsidiaries of the embattled Star Entertainment Group over “innumerable” violations of casino reporting and due diligence obligations that could result in fines totalling billions of dollars.

The Massachusetts Gaming Commission will process MGM Resorts International’s sports-betting license application even though it was filed two days after a deadline, allowing commissioners to consider the application during a public review next week.

The end of this month cannot come soon enough for the U.S. sports-betting industry, which is enduring its worst year since 2018 and suddenly faces an uncertain future.

Problem gambling is widespread among professional and youth footballers in Sweden, according to a large survey of footballers, youth academy players, coaches and staff in the 32 teams in the top two divisions in the country.