Something for the weekend - 07 June 2024

They say money makes the world go round. This was definitely the case at iGB this week as deals, deposit limits and donations found their way into our roster. And, as usual, we were there – calculator in hand – to capture it all.

The week kicked off with Gaming Innovation Group’s €3.0m acquisition of Casinomeister, an online casino forum and review platform. Casinomeister will operate under the GiG Media portfolio and, according to its new owners, help to diversify GiG’s business. Of course, this all comes at a busy time for GiG, as its Platform & Sportsbook division prepares to be spun off.

Staying on the subject of procuring and millions, the week also saw a major development in the case of Ippei Mizuhara, former interpreter for professional baseball player Shohei Ohtani, who was charged with two federal counts of stealing £17m from the star. Mizuhara entered a guilty plea to both counts on Tuesday, telling the judge he had “fallen into major gambling debt”.

Just before the plea, Jill R. Dorson dug into whether Mizuhara’s addiction could have been slowed if he’d been playing with a legal bookmaker, which would have had checkpoints to flag harmful behaviour. Read Jill’s piece and see what you think.

On that slightly downbeat note, and before we delve deeper into the rest of the week’s news, let’s cheer ourselves up with something a little more light-hearted.

iGB Diary: Dave Portnoy’s Midas touch and Ugly and proud!

Happy Friday igamers! This week the Diary unfurls its Dallas Mavericks/Florida Panthers dual-branded mega flag then gawps at a featureless Dutch monolith displaying all the charm of a windswept municipal car park.

Dave Portnoy’s Midas touch

Dave Portnoy. A name that resonates loudly in both US sports media and the gambling industry as the founder of Barstool Sports.

Portnoy has built a career on splitting opinion by being enjoyably (or infuriatingly) controversial, which has on occasion landed him in hot water. He previously blamed his brash persona for Barstool struggling to gain gambling licences, leading Penn Entertainment to sell it back to him for just $1 in 2023.

Dave isn’t just all talk, though. He is renowned for his gambling proficiency, and in trademark understated style has previously pronounced himself the “hottest gambler on the planet”.

To those rubbed up the wrong way by Portnoy, this week won’t have brought much solace after he announced that should the Boston Celtics win the NBA Finals and the Edmonton Oilers claim Stanley Cup glory, he will be in line for another $2.1m to add to his teetering pile. Already enjoying a lucrative year, those winnings would take Portnoy’s 2024 tally to $7.5m. Cha-ching!

It’s a run the 47-year-old insists should be “taught in history books”. While the world’s teachers may have something to say about that, the man is certainly on a hot streak, like him or not.

Ugly and proud!

The Diary appreciates a bit of architecture. We enjoy nothing more than staring at buildings, reading blue plaques and wondering how these crumbling, decrepit old structures ever passed a building inspection. 

OK, to be honest, we’re more wowed by grander buildings – think tall, colourful cathedrals or the gigantic Tesco down the road.

But over in Gelderland, a province in the Netherlands, they like to celebrate the, er, less aesthetically pleasing buildings in their midst.

Eighteen years ago local newspaper De Gelderlander launched a competition looking for the ugliest building in Nijmegen, the largest city in the province. And this year, the Holland Casino Nijmegen building claimed second place!

Disappointingly, despite having the bland charisma of a faded air conditioning tower, the casino has never managed to clinch top spot. It’s very funny that it keeps getting nominated year after year, though.

We have to wonder what might push it to first place. A purple front door? More windows? Knocking the whole thing down and rebuilding it in the shape of a fish? We’re already looking forward to seeing the results in 2025.

This week on iGB

Mizuhara wasn’t the only sports industry professional in the hot seat this week. Major League Baseball (MLB) opened an investigation into five players suspected of betting on baseball while they were active in the league. As a result, San Diego Padres infielder Tucupita Marcano was banned for life, after it was discovered that he had bet on his own team. Four other players received suspensions of up to a year.

Unbelievably, the sports-world betting soap opera we’re currently living in doesn’t end there. An alleged co-conspirator to Jontay Porter, the disgraced NBA player banned for breaching National Basketball Association (NBA) betting rules, was arrested at JFK Airport this week and charged with wire fraud. Long Phi Pham had booked a one-way ticket to Australia and was carrying $92,000 in cash, three cell phones and betting slips at the time of his arrest. And at time of writing, two more people – Timothy McCormack and Mahmud Mullah – have also been arrested.

To more routine news and there were a flurry of new appointments this week. Crown Resorts appointed former Virgin Australia boss John Borghetti as its new chairman, effective 1 July. Borghetti will replace William McBeath, who is stepping down after two years of service in the role.

In the spirit of appointing high-flyers, Bragg announced that former Bally’s SVP Robbie Bressler would take on the role of interim CFO, also from 1 July. And Intralot named Nikolaos Nikolakopoulos as its new CEO, news that coincided with it announcing a decidedly middling set of Q1 results.

On the charitable front, GambleAware announced that it had received £49.5m in voluntary charitable donations in 2023-24, an increase of 13.8% on its previous year. Once again, Flutter was the top donor, pledging £18.0m on behalf of its brands. Expectedly, Flutter was followed by Entain, Hillside – operator of Bet365 – and William Hill.

Over in the Netherlands, gambling regulator Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) set two new deposit limits for players: €300 for those aged between 18 and 24, and €700 for players over the age of 24. This is being hailed as a “major step” for player safety in the country, particularly for young people, and will take effect from 1 October.

Elsewhere, Ozric Vondervelden, co-founder of Greco, penned a piece exploring the realities of bonus abuse. Vondervelden spoke to Duncan Garvie, head of ADR for CasinoReviews.com, Joachim Timmermans, co-founder of Quickspins and Richard Hayler, managing director of IBAS about approaches to minimise bonus abuse and support genuine players.

And last but not least, we put out the latest instalment of the World Series of Politics, a bumper episode that saw our hosts Brendan Bussmann and Brandt Iden offer a rundown of the latest developments in Minnesota, D.C., Delaware and Illinois.

That’s all for this week! Same time, same place next Friday!