Casino group biggie clinches deal

Posted by admin | Posted on 29-04-2010

Category : Casinos

Tags: Online casino, Online poker

(Dragonfish DealJanuary 31, 2010)The online casino group 888 Holdings Plc has an independent B2B division that goes by the name of Dragonfish. This group is a supplier of online casino software to the various holdings, subsidiaries and affiliates. 888 Holdings was pleased to announce that Dragonfish had signed a deal with Lex Online Entertainment Limited, which is a subsidiary of Centric Multimedia SA. They are going to be providing them with online casino and poker software. The deal has them supplying their two brands with all of their online casino and poker software, as well as their fraud and risk management, customer support, e-payment processing, and back office technology. They will be launching in several different languages as well, which will really open them up to the online casino market. Linden Lab’s Second Life (SL) is a virtual world launched on June 23, 2003 where users, called Residents, can explore, socialize, interact and create and trade virtual property and services with each other through avatars. Second Life has become a phenomenon worldwide, generating around $35 million of business every month, and the deal struck will see Dragonfish provide electronic payments, fraud and customer support management services to the company which predicts $0.5billion of business this year alone.

They are currently focusing on the South and Eastern European market, as they know that right now they are one of the hot spots for online casino gambling. There are so many areas out there that are saturated within the online casino industry that they wanted to branch out to other territories that are ready to go. Centric Multimedia distributes multimedia and software and already has many investments in the online casino gambling industry. This online casino deal will expand their presence in the market, and give them a much stronger standing. Not only that but they can use their existing channels to market their new online casino sites through a new campaign. The deal, which ties revenue streams from Cashcade brands including Foxy, Think and Cheeky into the Dragonfish platform until May 2014, follows the widespread mooting of a possible move off the network by 888 rival Party Gaming following PartyGaming’s buy of Cashcade in July 2009.

Dragonfish managing director Gabi Campos said PartyGaming’s decision to keep Cashcade on Dragonfish (which also avoids the disruptive effect of moving the bingo operator’s players to another platform) reflected the strength of the Dragonfish bingo software and back-end.Cashcade is the largest bingo operator in the UK, and owns standalone networks Foxy Bingo, Cheeky Bingo, Think Bingo, Little Big Bingo, Bingo Scotland and Foxy Zero, which are all powered by Dragonfish. PartyGaming also recently relaunched its ITV Bingo website via Cashcade. Dragonfish has been instrumental in propping up 888 Holding’s recent quarterly results, and managed to post a 15% year on year increase in revenue in Q3 when the company’s overall revenue saw a decline of 10%. This was mostly due to a series of recent deals struck by Dragonfish, with big businesses, including Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment and South Africa’s Tsongo Sun Gaming group, as well as being involved in launching poker and gaming in the Balkans. Dragonfish-owner 888 tied Wink and Posh Bingo into the Dragonfish network by acquiring the rooms from owners Daub for £60m in December 2009.

New Internet Gambling Legislation may be beneficial in U.S

Posted by admin | Posted on 07-04-2010

Category : Gambling

Tags: Internet Gambling, Sports betting

A new study released on Monday from an English gaming consulting company shows that the effects of regulating internet gambling in the United States would be greater than previously thought.
There have been numerous studies to demonstrate the amount of revenue that could be generated for the federal government through the legalization and regulation of online gaming. The study was done by H2 Gambling Capital, which provides a lot of marketing information. Data regarding the gaming industry, and is getting a great deal of attention from the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative, which is the top advocate for the legalization of internet gaming in the United States. In the study, H2 Gambling Capital indicates that the potential benefits from the regulation of online gaming, including poker and sports betting would have a tremendous impact on employment and also add tax revenues. The numbers that H2 Gambling Capital has discovered in its study vastly outpace other studies that members of Congress have quoted. They said that if the United States were to regulate internet gaming, H2 Gambling Capital said that close to 32,000 jobs would be created over a short period of five-year time span. Perhaps most surprisingly, expenditures from regulated internet gaming in the United States would top $94 billion over the same period, generating $57.5 billion in tax revenues from wagering.
If the United States were to regulate the online gaming industry without allowing sports betting, H2 Gambling Capital’s models indicate that regulation would provide gross expenditures of $67 billion over five years, which would generate $30.8 billion in tax revenue and 25,470 jobs. These numbers are greater than those which Representatives Barney Frank (D-MA) have been trying to change the government’s perspective on online gaming. McDermott, who has introduced the Internet Gambling Regulation and Tax Enforcement Act (HR 4976), has said that regulation would lead to $42 billion in new federal government revenues and $30 billion in new state revenues over ten years. Barney Frank has pushed for regulation of the online gaming industry in the U.S. with his bill – the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act (HR 2267) – and has been able to garner support for that legislation from 68 fellow Congressmen. According to London-based stockbroker Daniel Stewart, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has apparently stepped onto the online gaming bandwagon and could introduce legislation that may be passed before the November elections.
This most recent study was produced by H2 Gambling Capital, a data and market intelligence information supplier for the worldwide gambling industry, and its results were released on April 20, 2010. There isn’t much time left for Congress to act on internet gaming, as the June 1, 2010 deadline is near, for on that day, the full scope of the UIGEA and its regulations will go into effect. Frank’s bill has gained the most traction of all that have been introduced in the past several years, and with 65 sponsors and a successful committee hearing in December of 2009, it should undergo the markup process and find a forum in another committee. Regardless of the slow progress, it’s an encouraging sign for online poker players that there is still movement on the issue in Congress.