Atlantic City’s casino market will be missing its leading light when gaming operations resume on July 2.

Last week, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced that AC’s casinos could partially reopen their brick-and-mortar gaming operations on July 2, ending their three-plus month COVID-19 closure. But MGM Resorts’ Borgata property said Monday that it won’t be joining this party.

The Borgata’s announcement followed Murphy’s surprise proclamation earlier Monday that he was delaying the planned rollout of indoor dining across the state. Casinos are included in this delay, and must also not serve any beverages – alcohol included – on their gaming floors or at indoor bars.

Murphy, who didn’t offer any indication of when this ban might be lifted, said the reversal was due to the recent surge in COVID-19 infections in many US states, a situation he claimed had been “compounded by instances of knucklehead behavior here at home.”

Germany’s perpetually troubled sports betting market is facing fresh upheaval after customers of a single lottery retailer claimed an outsized share of betting winnings.

On Friday, Andreas Schmidt, chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the state of Sachsen-Anhalt, called for his state to remove itself from the Oddset betting business run by Germany’s state lottery operators following word of an apparent consortium of customers and a single retailer.

Schmidt claimed that Sachsen-Anhalt accounted for four of the top-10 highest-spending users of the Oddset product in 2017-18. Moreover, these four users, whose €3m in total wagers accounted for around 1% of all betting sales during the period, also claimed €300k in winnings, representing nearly half of all winnings by Oddset customers in the state.

The four players included Marie Hebnarova, a lottery retailer in Zerbst, with whom all the suspect wagers were placed. Lottery retailers aren’t supposed to participate in Oddset contests, and Hebranova has since ceased running this Oddset operation.

New Jersey’s market-leading online casino is being spun off from its parent company in an effort to replicate its online success in other US states.

On Monday, Fertitta Entertainment owner Tilman Fertitta announced that he’d reached a deal to spin off the Golden Nugget online gambling operations from his Landry’s land-based gaming firm into a standalone entity via a reverse takeover with Landcadia II Holdings, a ‘special purpose acquisition company’ (SPAC) co-sponsored by Fertitta and Jefferies Financial Group.

Landcadia, which already trades on the Nasdaq stock exchange, will acquire Golden Nugget Online Gaming (GNOG) and rebrand itself as GNOG following regulatory approval, which is expected by Q3. The deal values GNOG at around $745m, including Landcadia assuming $150m of GNOG debt.

Tilman Fertitta will remain GNOG’s chairman and CEO, while current GNOG president Thomas Winter, whose leadership has been credited with much of GNOG’s New Jersey success, will also remain in his current post. Fertitta will retain both a controlling economic interest and controlling voting interest in GNOG following the reverse takeover and listing.

Singapore’s two casinos will reopen to certain members of the public on Wednesday, July 1, albeit under significant operating restrictions.

The Singapore Tourism Board recently confirmed that the city-state’s two integrated resorts – Las Vegas Sands’ Marina Bay Sands and Genting Singapore’s Resorts World Sentosa – would be allowed to restart operations on Wednesday. Both venues were ordered closed on April 7 as part of the government’s ‘circuit breaker’ plan to limit the further spread of COVID-19.

However, the casinos will only be welcoming back the upper-tier members of their respective customer rewards programs, as well as “existing annual levy holders,” aka locals who’ve already paid the SG$3k that gives them unlimited access to the casinos for a 12-month period (so excluding the less committed gamblers who opt for the SG$100 daily levy on a pay-as-you-go basis).

Nordic online gambling operator Betsson AB is the latest European bookmaker to set its sights on the expanding US sports betting market.

On Monday, Betsson announced plans to enter the Colorado online sports betting market via a 10-year market access deal with the Dostal Alley Casino. Betsson said it hopes to launch online betting in “the first part” of 2021, subject to local regulatory approval.

The family-owned Dostal property, located in Central City Black Hawk, is a self-described “small yet very quaint” casino that was one of the first gaming venues to launch in the state back in 1991. The property offers only slots and video poker machines, no gaming tables, and thus no room for a retail sportsbook. 

Betsson called the Colorado deal “a first and cautious step into the US market,” which the company plans to use to educate itself on the quirks and preferences of US bettors. Betsson plans to expand into other US states with a product “tailored to regional customer needs and differences.”

After a rollercoaster weekend of sports action, Barcelona will be looking at the La Liga table with cowed eyes as Real Madrid took advantage of their Catalan rivals’ early slip to move two points clear at the top.

Elsewhere, there were final day wins for Werder Bremen and Borussia Monchengladbach in the German Bundesliga as others fell on their swords in spectacular fashion.

La Liga Turnaround

Barcelona came back from lockdown in pole position to win their fifth La Liga title in six seasons, but after the weekend, their deadly rivals Real Madrid hold the advantage.