IGT’s popular social gaming division DoubleDown Interactive has been slapped with a class action lawsuit based on claims that its social casino products represent “camouflaged” gambling.

Illinois resident Margo Philips claims she lost over $1k over the past two years gambling with virtual chips she’d purchased to play DoubleDown’s social casino games. Philips’ complaint explains how none of the chips she won playing on DoubleDown were able to be withdrawn as cash, despite these chips being “identical to the chips that defendant sells” to its players. Philips argues that DoubleDown’s casino games are “nothing more than camouflaged unlawful games of chance.”

Philips purports to be one of “thousands of Illinois consumers” who have each lost at least $50 on DoubleDown, which she claims has “illegally profited” from their game play. Philips is seeking to recover all the real cash these consumers have paid to obtain DoubleDown gambling chips. Philips also wants to see DoubleDown shut down because its software allegedly fits the definition of a prohibited “gambling device.”

Illinois is ground zero for zany class action suits against online gaming, be they real money or virtual money sites. An Illinois court recently tossed the latest in a long line of attempts by a few opportunistic Illinois residents looking to recoup other players’ gambling losses at online poker outfits PokerStars and Full Tilt prior to those companies’ acquisition by Canada’s Amaya Gaming.

The man behind sports betting risk management outfit Touchbet Ltd. has been revealed as the new owner of online bookmaker Pinnacle Sports.

In February, longtime online fixture Pinnacle announced it had completed the sale of a controlling interest in the company the previous August. The company subsequently announced a new focus on obtaining licenses and doing business in regulated markets but the identity of the company’s new overlord(s) has remained a tightly guarded secret.

Until Wednesday, that is, when eGamingReview reported that Pinnacle’s new boss is none other than Magnus Hedman, founder of Malta-based B2B risk management and sports betting odds supplier Touchbet.

Pinnacle CEO Paris Smith said she was “proud” to confirm Hedman’s acquisition although she said the company had felt no urgency in revealing Hedman’s identity. Smith said Pinnacle’s “culture has always been to remain low-key and let our unrivalled product speak for itself.”

iGaming North America has officially kicked off at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, an event dedicated to opportunities within and regulation surrounding the US iGaming Market.

Over the course of the next three days, several hundred gaming professionals will gather for sessions, lunch meet-ups, post-conference drinks and whatever else one gets up to when spending time in Las Vegas.

Day one of the event attracted a solid crowd, with an almost full house assembled for the opening session, a 2015 Visionaries Panel covering the state of the industry.

Unfortunately two of the key speakers, David Baazov and Brian Mattingley, were unable to make it last minute but Gavin Isaacs of Scientific Games and Renato Ascoli of IGT with Sue Schneider as moderator delivered a solid session.

New Jersey’s regulated online gambling market earned nearly $13.2m in March, a new revenue record in the market’s 16-month history.

The gains were entirely driven by the casino vertical, which earned $10.9m this March compared to $8.6m a year ago. By comparison, the struggling poker vertical fell from $3.2m last year to just $2.2m in March 2015. Poker revenue rose nearly 10% on a sequential basis but March also had 10% more days than February, meaning the vertical was essentially flat, so don’t go popping those champagne corks just yet.

The month’s overall revenue total is a significant improvement over the $11.9m the market recorded in the same month last year. The numbers are up even more from the $10.4m the market generated in February 2015, although those numbers were artificially depressed due to a $1.5m jackpot at Betfair’s online casino site.

On an individual operator basis, the Borgata/Bwin.party/Pala Interactive sites generated just under $4.2m in March, up from $3.7m in February. The poker vertical earned $1.23m (+9%), while the casino earned $2.96m (+15%).

Online gambling sites have come under a fresh wave of distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks by malicious programmers looking for a quick payday.

Over the weekend, the Twitter helpdesk of UK-listed operator Betfair reported that both its betting exchange and fixed-odds sportsbook were down for the count. On Monday, Betfair revealed that it was “currently experiencing a DDOS attack on our site, which is stopping all site traffic.” Later messages confirmed that the site’s issues were the result of “a deliberate attempt by a third party to interrupt our service.”

By late Monday, Betfair was reporting that its site was “stable for now, however we are still monitoring to see if this malicious activity re-occurs.” However, as of Tuesday, the site said it continued to experience “technical issues beyond our control” that were affecting its in-play feed.

Traditionally, DDOS attacks on online sportsbooks are timed to coincide with marquee sporting events, in the hopes that operators will consider a ransom payment an unwanted but worthwhile expense in order not to miss out on significant betting volumes. Betfair’s unknown assailants appear to have timed their attacks around this weekend’s Grand National racing fixture and Sunday’s climax of golf’s Masters event.

Atlantic City’s eight surviving casinos bounced back from their weather-related woes to record a small gaming revenue increase in March.

The eight AC casinos that didn’t shut their doors last year generated gaming revenue of $190.7m in March, up 1.3% from the same month last year. The figure doesn’t include the $13.2m the state’s regulated online gambling sites brought in last month. Sticklers will note that the month’s total is down 12.6% if you count the four walking dead casinos that were still operating in zombie mode in March 2014. Regardless, the March total is a significant gain from February’s $168m, so cheer the fuck up.

In purely land-based terms, just three AC casinos posted revenue gains in March, led by the market-leading Borgata. In a case of the rich getting richer, the Borgata’s brick-and-mortar revenue was up 8.8% year-on-year to $56m. The month’s biggest gain came at the Golden Nugget, which rose a hefty 25.9% to $16.2m. Harrah’s was the month’s only other gainer, rising 11.4% to $32.3m.

The month’s decliners finished as follows: Caesars ($23.3m, -4.1%), Tropicana ($21.1m, -4.8%), Bally’s ($15.9m, -11.1%), Trump Taj Mahal ($14.8m, -22.8%) and Resorts Atlantic City ($11m, -1.5%).

Macau will cap the number of visitors it accepts each year from mainland China in order to maintain the quality of life enjoyed by the city’s permanent residents.

Citing a report by the Institute for Tourism Studies, Macau’s government says the city can successfully absorb between 89k and 92k visitors per day. However, during the recent Lunar New Year celebrations, Macau was receiving 147k visitors per day. Macau Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Alexis Tam Chon Weng called this latter figure “well above” the city’s capacity and thus changes were required.

Tam said Macau intends to cap the annual number of mainland visitors at 21m, roughly the number the city welcomed in 2014. That figure represents two-thirds of the city’s total 31m visits in 2014. Macau Business Daily quoted Tam saying Macau wanted to keep mainland visits stable while boosting international visitors in order to achieve “an equilibrium point.”

Tam reassured casino operators that the 21m cap was “not stable” and would eventually increase once the pace of infrastructure development caught up with the frenzied building of casinos and other tourist-drawing attractions in Macau.

American Gaming Association CEO Geoff Freeman believes criminals have been sucking on illegal gambling’s big bouncy breasts for too damn long.

Freeman made his spirited call to arms – to arm-level, at least – at a meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) at MGM Resorts’ Beau Rivage property in in Biloxi, Mississippi. Feeling his oats on home turf, Freeman asked the assembled AGs to go full-on ‘avengers assemble’ mode in the fight against illegal gambling.

Freeman said illegal gambling is a “pernicious form of venture capital investments — the mother’s milk for a host of violent criminal enterprises.” Freeman believes society needs to tear these tainted teats from criminals’ mouths and that the AGs and the AGA should do some tearing ASAP.

Freeman made a clear distinction between upstanding gambling operators and the filthy rabble that lack AGA membership. Freeman says this latter group gets its illegal mom’s milk from four main hooters: sports betting outside Nevada, black-market gaming machines, internet sweepstakes cafes and internationally licensed online gambling sites.

Online betting firm Dafabet has extended its international betting sponsorship of English Premier League club Everton for another three years, where it will continue serving as an official partner of the team until the 2017-2018 EPL season.

Under the terms of the agreement, Dafabet will be able to continue offering fans an array of promotional events and offerings to help boost the team’s interaction with its supporters. The Asian betting operator will also provide Thai and Chinese versions of Everton’s official website, allowing fans in the two countries to gain access to club in their native languages.

The Dafabet – Everton alliance began in 2012. Everton’s marketing and communications director, Richard Kenyon, spoke about the club’s partnership with Dafabet, which began when the betting company was still a relative neophyte in the Premier League when it burst into the scene during the 2012-2013 season. Since then, the two sides have enjoyed a “positive couple of seasons” together and Everton, according to Kenyon, is “pleased to continue working alongside Asia’s leading online gaming site to offer our international supporters a premium gaming service.”

His counterpart, Dafabet Head of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship John Cruces, expressed similar sentiments, saying that the online gambling site has enjoyed a fruitful partnership with the Toffees for the past three seasons and is now looking forward to “continuing the relationship and further achieve our mutual goals.”

There is no shortage of companies angling to win the single casino license available in the Greek-controlled southern half of Cyprus. Now, a Beverly Hills-based realty company is trying to put together a casino proposal in the hopes of securing the sought-after license.

Realty Group International (RGI) is eyeing a major casino investment in the Mediterranean island and already has a plan in place should it take hold of the casino license. Part of that plan includes an initial pre-established consortium made up of “prominent institutions” and “key people” that are ready to proceed into the bidding process.

The company is the only US-based real estate company with a significant presence in Cyprus is touting existing partnerships with local groups that can provide the necessary assistance needed to aid in developing its proposed casino project. It already owns several large plots of land that can be used to develop a project of this magnitude, including one of the largest beachfront parcels in the island, located across the coastal area of Larnaka. According to RGI, the property includes over 1.2 million square feet of buildable posts and 1 million square feet of tourist zone areas that can be converted into a number of attractions, including a golf course, water and theme parks, a 900-room five-star hotel and a handful of conference centers.

RGI has as a lot of competition as 13 other companies have expressed interest in the casino license on the island.

Embattled online betting company 666Bet has been forced to issue a new statement addressing the growing unrest from angry customers demanding their money back, saying that the site needs to be online before it could pay outstanding customer balances.

In a statement released on its Facebook page, 666Bet called the UK Gambling Commission’s statement that the site didn’t need to have a license in order for the company to withdraw money back to their customers as “misleading,” arguing that the site needed to be online to do it and more importantly, it needs a third-party provider to do it. Unfortunately, 666Bet claims that a number of its third party providers, including its payment providers, “immediately cancelled or suspended” their contracts with the company pending its return as a “white label”.

666Bet did say that it was in negotiations with an unnamed third party provider that would allow it to return online and process customer withdrawals. But this agreement needs to be sanctioned by the UKGC and so far, the company has yet to hear “updates” from either party regarding the issue.

“We understand customers’ frustrations and fully appreciate their concerns, not helped by erroneous and inaccurate press reports – both in print and online – that have helped to muddy the waters. We have been doing everything within our power to refund customers fully but are now waiting on the aforementioned parties to reach an agreement so we can proceed as planned,” the statement concluded.

Irish bookmaker Paddy Power has found itself embroiled in another controversy after an ill-fated tweet before an English Premier League game between Liverpool and Newcastle game sparked an enormous public outcry.

Paddy Power, known for dipping its toes in controversy, tweeted before the game that “Newcastle have suffered more Kop beatings over the last 20 years than an unarmed African-American male,” alluding to the famous home end at Anfield and the rash of recent incidents in the US where unarmed African-Americans were killed by police officials. The joke was intended to generate interest in the company’s betting markets for the game itself. But as has been the case numerous times in the past, Paddy’s derogatory attempts at humor turned into another round of public backlash from the masses.

The tweet has since been deleted and a Paddy spokesman has officially apologized for the company posting it on its Twitter account, telling CNN that the message was supposed to a joke and that “no offense was meant” by it. But even the apology did little to appease Twitter users who condemned the betting company for another out-of-line joke that touched on a serious issue in the US these days.

Some have even gone as far as calling Paddy Power “racist,” which would be another in the long list of transgressions the company has sowed in recent years. This tweet referencing police brutality issues in the US crossed that line from crass and tasteless to downright offensive.

New Mexico moved one step closer to finalizing a new compact between the state and Native American tribes after Governor Susana Martinez signed a gaming compact that will allow tribal casinos to remain in operation for another 22 years. The compact was approved last month by the Legislature and with Martinez’s signature, all that remains is an approval from the U.S. Department of Interior before the compact takes into effect.

Martinez’s approval of the new gaming compact is a culmination of three years of negotiations between the state and Native American leaders. Should it get a thumbs up from the Department of Interior as many expect it will, a handful of provisions will be put in place as agreed upon by both parties.

Under the terms of the compact, Native American tribes will provide regular reports to the state about their gaming activities, allowing the state the opportunity to work with tribes in the event that problems arise affecting either side. State regulators will also have improved access to business information of the tribes to help ensure that the tribes are complying with the terms set forth in the new compact.

Native American tribes have agreed to increase the state’s cut in revenue sharing and to direct a percentage of gaming revenue to help address potential problem gambling issues. Finally, tribal casinos will now be part of a self-exclusion program, a new provision that previously was used only at private racetracks.

It happens whenever there’s a big market event and securities authorities get bored and want to feel relevant. So they go after high profile people just so they can get their names in the papers as “Administrators of Justice”. Martha Stewart went through it with the SEC, Mark Cuban thankfully escaped it, and now Amaya’s executive inner circle is trying to fend it off as well from the AMF. Insider trading, who knew what when, who traded what in response and why, and how much money did everyone make who might have, Heaven Forefend, known something?

We’ll get into where Amaya is now both regarding this investigation as well as financially and the risks ahead, but first a look at insider trading itself and its supposedly “unfair” and “criminal” nature.

Insider trading laws are like antitrust laws. They’re based on nothing objective, with very loose definitions, and swing based on hunches and the personal feelings of judges and other government officials. How can anyone determine what is insider information and what isn’t? Knowledge is never uniform. Famed investor Jim Rogers, for example, was known and is still known for physically going to places and markets he is interested to invest in, talking to the relevant people, getting a feel for what’s going on. Certainly a lot more than investors do, which is mostly look at computers (like me).

If Jim Rogers has a conversation with a CEO or some big guy in an industry or a government official somewhere who knows something about an imminent war that will rile markets, he has information that I don’t have. And he can act on it. And if he does, other people tend to follow. Is that insider trading or just hard work? Who knows?

Australia is poised to become a gambling heavyweight as growing wealth in Asia, coupled with VIP gambling spending, could boost the country’s casino revenue to as much as $6.2 billion by 2020.

Market researcher IBISWorld made the claim, saying that Australia’s three new casinos – one in Sydney, two in Queensland – could act as the driving forces in bringing more of Asia’s richest gamblers to the Land Down Under. IBISWorld senior industry analyst Spencer Little told The Australian that the opening of Crown Resorts’ $1.3 billion VIP-only casino on Sydney Harbour and the two casino projects in Queensland – Aquis Resorts’ $8 billion development in Cairns and ASF Consortium’s $7.5 billion project in the Gold Coast – has the potential to jump-start Australia’s casino industry, which hasn’t had a new casino since the Reef Hotel Casino opened in 1996. Incidentally, Hong Kong billionaire Tony Fung’s Aquis Resorts was in line to purchase the casino before the deal fell through late last year.

With the opening of these new casinos, Australia could turn into a premier gambling destination in the Asia-Pacific region with the capacity to compete against the likes of Macau, Singapore, the Philippines, and other countries in Asia. Japan could also make things interesting, although it still has to deal with a myriad of issues before it can join the region’s exploding casino industry.

Despite the increased competition brought about by more casinos opening in the region, IBISWorld believes Australia can more than hold its own, thanks in large part to “high levels of domestic spending and increasing levels of foreign gambling dollars.”