News

The European Commission has decided to launch a formal investigation into a potential breach of state aid rules in a case involving the Belgian state and betting operator Ladbrokes.

The case was first notified to the European Commission (EC) in March 2019 and concerns the exclusive authorisation granted to Ladbrokes in 2014 to operate virtual betting games in Belgium.

The exclusive right to operate virtual betting was challenged by two rival gambling operators whose request for authorisation was denied by the Belgian Gaming Commission, which said at the time that it was reviewing the relevant gambling legislation.

Sportradar
The EC said Wednesday (Sep. 2) that it has decided to initiate a formal investigation procedure into the possible distortion of competition in the field of virtual betting in Belgium, although the basis for its decision is yet to be made public.

France’s regulated online betting and gaming market recorded a 6 per cent decline in gross gaming revenue (GGR) to €323m for the second quarter of 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sports betting was the worst affected segment due to the suspension of major sports, with GGR falling by 56 per cent year-on-year to €94m following a 57 per cent reduction in stakes to €513m.

Horse race betting GGR rose 33 per cent to €88m, despite the cessation of French horseracing until 11 May, with bettors able to continue betting on foreign horse races, pushing total horse racing betting stakes up 35 per cent to a quarterly record €362m.

Online poker saw the biggest growth in Q2 as GGR soared 126 per cent to a record quarterly high of €142m.

Q2 AND H1 2020 GROSS GAMING REVENUE COMPARISON (€)
Q2 2020 Q2 2019 % Change H1 2020 H1 2019 % Change
Sports Betting 94m 214m (56%) 356m 436m (18%)
Horse Race Betting 88m 66m 33% 162m 133m 21%
Poker 142m 63m 126% 239m 131m 83%
TOTAL 323m 342m (6%) 758m 700m 8%
Overall total active players fell by 9 per cent to 2,019,000 during the quarter, with average spend per active player down 32 per cent at €86.

Sports betting active players fell by 36 per cent to 1,093,000 in Q2, offsetting a 2 per cent increase in horse race betting actives to 319,000 and a 68 per cent improvement in poker actives to 1,064,000.

For the first half of 2020, total GGR across the market increased by 8 per cent to €758m, despite an 18 per cent drop in sports betting GGR to €356m. Horse race betting GGR rose 21 per cent to €162m, while poker GGR increased by 83 per cent to €239m.

The provincial lottery of Rio Negro in Argentina has filed a criminal complaint against more than 100 online gambling websites following a surge in unlicensed iGaming during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Rio Negro Lottery filed the criminal complaint Friday with the province’s public prosecutor under Article 301 of the penal code, which prohibits any unauthorised gambling activity which poses a threat to public health or lottery profits.

The complaint addresses 130 unlicensed online gambling websites, with those convicted under the law facing a maximum penalty of six years imprisonment.

The lottery has also established a hotline for players to provide anonymous tips about unlicensed operators, and will conduct an extensive communications campaign in the province to raise awareness of the risks associated with illegal gambling.

Scientific Games Lottery
As part of the crackdown, one local lottery agent has been raided and shut down for its part in an illegal online gambling operation.

Sportsbooks in Illinois have resumed remote account registrations after Governor JB Pritzker reissued a series of executive orders aimed at combatting the spread of COVID-19.

The requirement for in-person sportsbook account registrations was first suspended on June 4 but came back into force on July 26.

Since then, Illinois has seen a surge in new COVID cases, with 20 counties now at a ‘warning level’ for coronavirus compared to 14 counties a week ago.

As a result, Governor Pritzker reissued more than 30 executive orders Friday to slow the spread of the pandemic, including the suspension of in-person account registration requirements for sports betting.

Sportradar
The in-person registration requirement will remain suspended until at least September 19.

Lotto New Zealand has outlined plans for a new technology platform after experiencing disruptions due to surging demand for online lottery products.

Lotto New Zealand has recorded nearly 200,000 new online registrations since COVID-19 related restrictions came into force in March, with online sales last week accounting for 40 per cent of total lottery sales compared to 25 per cent prior to the lockdown.

“To support the move to online play, and the big increase in the number of people playing online, Lotto NZ is making a substantial investment in the upgrade of MyLotto,” said NZ Lottery chief executive Chris Lyman.

“While this work is underway we have been making interim improvements. However, regrettably there have been some issues on MyLotto. This has in turn resulted in some pretty poor customer experiences, and for that I sincerely apologise.”

Lyman added that the lottery expects to complete upgrades to the existing MyLotto website and app by early 2021, with a new gaming platform scheduled for deployment in 2024, including the full replacement of the back-end gaming system that supports MyLotto, as well as all terminals in retail stores.

Scientific Games Lottery
“We have significantly more people buying tickets online now than ever before. Nearly 200,000 people have registered to play online since 25 March – to put this into perspective, this is the number of new online players we would expect over a two-year period, not four months,” Lyman said.

“We sold around 2.5 million tickets for [Friday’s] draw, and over a million of those were online. This is the most tickets we have ever sold online. This slowed down our processing significantly, and unfortunately led to delays.”

New Jersey’s regulated betting and gaming market generated total gaming revenue of $264.5m in July, buoyed by another strong performance from iGaming and improved results from sports betting and land-based gaming.

Total revenue fell by 21 per cent compared to the same period last year as Atlantic City casinos, retail sportsbooks and racetracks began re-opening at the start of the month following their mandated closure due to COVID-19.

NEW JERSEY GAMING REVENUE COMPARISON: JULY 2020 (US$)
July 2020 July 2019 % Change
Land-Based 147.4m 277.2m (47%)
iGaming 87.5m 39.3m 123%
– Online Poker 4.8m 1.9m 155%
– Online Casino 82.7m 37.4m 121%
Sports Betting 29.6m 17.9m 65%
TOTAL 264.5m 334.4m (21%)
Revenue from iGaming soared 122.5 per cent year-on-year to $87.5m in July, comprising a 155 per cent increase in online poker revenue to $4.8m and a 121 per cent rise in online casino revenue to $82.7m.

Golden Nugget continued to lead the iGaming market as it grew revenue by 111 per cent to $31.5m for the month, although the biggest growth came from Ocean Casino, where revenue soared 217 per cent to $1.2m.

iGaming revenue at Resorts Digital rose 162.5 per cent to $18.0m, while Borgata revenue grew 140 per cent to $15.3m and Caesars Interactive revenue climbed 90 per cent to $9.7m. Tropicana revenue increased by 62 per cent to $6.2m, while revenue from Hard Rock increased by 195 per cent year-on-year to $5.6m.

Total sports betting wagers amounted to $315.1m in July, with online generating $295.8m of the total and retail just $19.3m. As a result, sports betting revenue increased by 65 per cent to $29.6m, with racetrack Meadowlands generating nearly half of the total as revenue rose 55 per cent to $14.1m.

The next biggest sports betting operator was Resorts Digital, which saw revenue climb 119 per cent to $8.2m, while Borgata revenue soared 245 per cent to $3.0m. Monmouth Park generated $1.7m in sports betting revenue, with Hard Rock at $856,358. The remaining five operators generated combined sports betting revenue of $357,825 during the month.

Land-based casino revenue fell by 47 per cent year-on-year to $147.4m, with Ocean Casino the only operator to record growth, up 23 per cent to $23.6m.

For the first eight months of 2020, total gaming revenue decreased by 33 per cent to $1.29bn. iGaming revenue increased by 99 per cent to $510.2m, with sports betting revenue up 9 per cent at $138.5m and land-based casino revenue down 58 per cent at $643.2m.

The Virginia lottery released its full draft sports betting regulations for public comment Monday, with the regulated online sports betting market expected to launch in January 2021.

The proposed regulations cover topics including operations, internal controls and enforcement, and are open to public comment until September 9, one week prior to the deadline set for the lottery board to approve the regulations.

Subject to approval of the regulations, licensing is expected to begin in October, with the first online sports betting operations expected to go live in January next year. A total of 12 online-only sports betting licenses will be available in the state.

“The Virginia Lottery takes very seriously its role assigned by the General Assembly to appropriately and responsibly regulate sports betting in the Commonwealth,” said Virginia Lottery executive director Kevin Hall.

Sportradar
“The regulatory framework we are building now is vital to the process, and we are committed to doing so with transparency to allow stakeholders and the public to weigh-in on these preliminary rules-of-the-road for sports wagering in Virginia.”

There is little doubt that business development chiefs want conferences to come back. But do they want them back with all the restrictions that will come with a hasty return? And do they want so many?

On 10 March, SBC Events optimistically postponed its CasinoBeats Malta event until June. It also postponed Betting on Sports America to the more realistic date of December 2020. A month later it accepted the inevitable and made CasinoBeats an online event.

On 24 March, the day after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the UK’s lockdown, Clarion Gaming postponed ICE North America. It was due to take place in May but is now scheduled for 2021. Just three days later, SBC announced it would hold a Digital Summit across five days from 27 April – 1 May. Clarion soon followed suit with the announcement of a free digital version of ICE North America, as organisers hurried to offer participants an alternative to cancelled events.

Since then, SiGMA Group rescheduled its Asia events SiGMA Manila and AIBC Manila to 2021. ICE Asia was postponed until 2021. The Indian Gaming event was postponed until further notice. The IAGA International Gaming Summit, G2E Asia, ASEAN Gaming Summit, East Coast Gaming Conference, the OIGA Conference and Trade Show all cancelled or postponed.

Throughout all this, the big question was whether G2E would take place in Las Vegas in October. Along with ICE Totally Gaming in February (and to a lesser extent G2E Asia in Macau) it is one of the year’s flagship events. If you are only going to attend one, depending on your geographic focus, it would be one of these.

G2E is organised by the American Gaming Association and Reed Exhibitions. The event seemed so far away they were understandably reluctant to cancel it. However, as lockdown continued into its third month it became harder and harder to envisage a scenario where the industry could meet safely and within guidelines.

Las Vegas casinos reopened in June, but the organisers were still reluctant to commit to a physical event. So many questions remain unanswered. Would people travel to the event from the US or from overseas? Would executives be too busy trying to save their businesses?

Konami took the decision in May to withdraw from all trade shows until the end of the financial year and focus investment on its employees. Many will be feeling similarly, even if they will not say so publicly. One marketing exec confided that he hadn’t even thought about G2E, let alone ICE. Plans would normally be sorted for both by this time of year.

The only thing that the organisers of ICE and G2E were willing to admit was that neither event would look the same as normal. What else could they say? Their businesses are in danger as much as any of their exhibitors. [G2E has since confirmed that there will be no physical event in Las Vegas this year].

Events go digital

In the meantime, the digital events started to take place. On the surface, the numbers are impressive. The digital version of ICE North America is said to have attracted over 4,000 registrations from 558 companies, based in 85 countries around the world, and recorded over 7,000 visits to the site. The SBC Digital Summit in April claimed over 10,000 delegates. But were contacts made and were they meaningful?

Among the handful of attendees Gaming Intelligence surveyed there was respect for how quickly SBC got their event up and running. One attendee says he made a few leads but not the suitcase-full he would normally at a real-life conference. Business development chiefs have had a busy lockdown as operators focus intently on their online operations, but there are drawbacks to doing everything on Zoom.

“I believe in face-to-face contact, when you’re establishing a relationship,” says Continent 8 managing director Americas Nick Nally. “Once established, it’s easier to do a Zoom.”

“My area of business is new business,” says Red Tiger Gaming commercial director Chris Looney. “The best business comes from the best relationships, immersing yourself in the operator’s business.”

He cites a deal done with Swiss Casinos. He met the team that were going to launch the land-based casino group’s online operation, but it was not until visiting the land-based casinos and getting to know the core business that a deal could be struck.

“I don’t think you can replicate that relationship through Skype or Zoom,” says Looney. Looney and Nally both admit it is hard to measure return on investment from trade shows. Looney describes it as “the unanswerable question”. But suppliers will be looking in closer detail at the numbers – and particularly the number of shows they visit and the number of employees they send.

Playtech
A medium-sized stand at ICE would cost around £300,000, and then you have to consider other costs such as connectivity, plus transporting and accommodating 50 or 60 staff. That will cost another £100,000. For the bigger suppliers it will be a £1m+. At a time when staff are being furloughed or let go, that becomes harder to justify – as Konami recognises.

“Covid-19 will change the way we think about shows and the way shows are done. Sometimes it feels like there is a show every other week. It is an important channel for us. It’s still a good platform to launch products but do we need to go to so many?” asks another seasoned marketing professional.

“It is over-saturated,” says Playson business development manager Lars Kollind. “Every year I look at the iGaming calendar and have a hard time understanding why we need to go to all the events. It’s the same people attending.”

Successful emerging suppliers such as Big Time Gaming and Relax Gaming have thus far refrained from spending anything on splashy stands but that might change as they grow bigger.

Suppliers at an earlier stage in their development are even more loathe to spend money on smart stands. ReelPlay chief commercial officer David Johnson enjoyed a long career at Cryptologic and NextGen/NYX before launching ReelPlay. He has seen how companies grow and how they deal with trade shows, but the industry is changing.

The emergence of games aggregators means suppliers can get to know their customers better if they are closely aligned with the aggregators. For an aggregator like Relax it might make sense to bring all their supplier partners together on one stand. Microgaming and Playtech have done something similar – although they own the studios that they show off on their stands; they are not just partners.

“We haven’t typically done deals at trade shows. At this stage of our growth it’s more about enhancing the throughput of licensed content to known partners,” says Johnson. “We are very active all year round – visiting our operators in Malta, Gibraltar and the US largely, so our partners see us regularly and we aren’t reliant on trade shows.”

He goes on to say that certain shows do offer value. For example, the Latin American or Tribal Gaming contacts made at G2E would be very difficult for a European supplier to access from home.

Kollind says that ICE has always been a tremendous success and echoes Johnson’s thoughts on G2E, but the future of others must come into question.

Future plans

Everyone welcomes a break from travelling. Not only is it good for the planet, it has given everybody a chance to reflect, analyse and prioritise. And there are a lot of people doing their sums.

“We had already taken a group decision not to exhibit at every show this year,” says Looney. “We will have to look at the whole picture. Do we do it the same way? I’m not sure.”

The event organisers try and reassure us that although conferences will not be the same as previous years, every precaution is being taken to protect attendees. From hand sanitisers to a careful re-evaluation of layouts to allow for physical distancing and the provision of personal protective equipment. But how do you greet somebody at your stand if your smile is hidden by a mask and you are too scared to shake their hand?

If Covid-19 flips the world into recession it will affect every business, and gambling industry conferences will be no different. There will be casualties. G2E Las Vegas has been cancelled for this year but the question remains: will ICE take place? No one is willing to answer that question just yet.

The District of Columbia Office of Lottery and Gaming has issued sports betting licenses to William Hill, Sportradar and Scientific Games.

William Hill’s American Wagering Inc. has been awarded a provisional sports wagering Class A operator license, allowing it to operate a sportsbook at Washington DC’s Capitol One Arena, where the ceremonial first bet was placed Monday.

“Washington, D.C. is known for its dedicated sports fans, and we’re excited to finally bring them a new way to engage with their favorite teams. Being the first to open a retail location in a professional sports venue wouldn’t be possible without our relationship with Ted Leonsis and his team at Monumental,” said Joe Asher, CEO of William Hill US.

“Our teams are working hard to finalize the permanent sports book, restaurant and bar concept we originally envisioned inside the arena.”

Sportradar
The Office of Lottery and Gaming also issued provisional sports wagering supplier licenses Friday to Sportradar and Scientific Games subsidiary NYX Digital Gaming, allowing them to provide gaming related goods and services to licensed sportsbooks in the District.

Rhode Island’s regulated sports betting market generated total wagers of $200.2m in the 2020 fiscal year ended 30 June, despite the impact of COVID-19 over the past four months.

Total wagers climbed by 57 per cent compared to the previous fiscal year, which included eight months of results from the state’s first sportsbooks launched in November 2018.

Twin River contributed $120.1m in wagers, with Tiverton generating $30.3m and the IGT-powered Sportsbook Rhode Island mobile app contributing a further $49.8m.

RHODE ISLAND SPORTS BETTING: (US$)
Wagers Payouts Revenue
Twin River 120.1m 108.2m 11.9m
Tiverton 30.3m 27.3m 3.0m
Online/Mobile 49.8m 46.0m 3.8m
TOTAL 200.2m 181.5m 18.7m
A total of $181.5m was paid out in winnings during the year, generating total book revenue of $18.7m. This comprised $11.9m from Twin River, $3.0m from Tiverton and $3.8m from mobile.

With the state’s two casinos closed in mid-March due to COVID-19, sports betting wagers over the past four months totaled just $13.1m. The two venues reopened on 8 June with limited capacity, as per state guidelines.