Ladbrokescasino is currently involved in an innovative marketing initiative to discover ‘Britain’s Sexiest Croupier’, teaming up with the popular ‘lad mag’ publications Nuts and Loaded to achieve maximum coverage across a readership that casino games numbers some 1.7 million.
The advertising and internet gambling industry publication Brand Republic reported Friday that the competition will encourage attractive women to upload their photos to dedicated microsites at Nuts. Readers of the magazines will then be encouraged to go to the casinos sites via magazine and online promotions and rate their favourites.
The winner of the competition will win a package of prizes including GBP 2 500 in cash and a shoot in the February 2010 issue of Loaded.
Amanda Briggs, Ladbrokescasino.com marketing manager, said: “This is a very exciting opportunity for us and will hopefully appeal to our own customers as well as readers from Nuts and Loaded.
“We’re always looking for new ways to attract our target audience and hope this opportunity will turn into a longer term partnership.”
The nationwide hunt kicks off this week with the release of Loaded’s December issue, which will be supported by Nuts and Loaded for three months, both online and in-magazine.
Magazine publisher IPC Ignite’s sponsorship and brand solutions manager Rob Hunt said: “This is a great way of engaging our audience. They love a flutter and they love sexy girls - giving them the opportunity to vote through our unique interactive rating mechanic is certain to generate great awareness.
“Our search to discover the hottest new talent will guarantee the campaign attracts the attention of millions of young men across the UK.”
The PartyGaming-powered Five Bingo gambling website, owned by UK television network Five, is using web-only television to best promotional effect with a free mid-morning bingo show on weekdays.
The one hour show will be broadcast live, with 10 free bingo and casino games on each episode.
The show is well timed to fill a television vacuum created by the end of the Bingo Night Live show and is very similar in concept. The Five Bingo gambling website and the free bingo show will be integrated to increase site awareness and enable players to check results in realtime on the 90 ball games.
The shows will be extensively promoted on the main Five television channel.
The UK mobile gambling focused company Cellectivity has announced that Carmen Media’s Spin3-powered mobile casino JackpotCity Mobile has joined its promotional portal.
The portal carries a range of mobile gambling offers for the convenience of on-the-go punters, who can browse through a selection of competing operators using a range of mobile platforms. Access to Cellectivity’s sportsbetting odds-comparison Bet2Go service is an additional benefit for the gambler.
Other well established mobile operators using the Cellectivity site include 888 Mobile, PartyGaming’s mobile offering, Spin3-powered 32Red’s mobile casino and Probability’s LadyLuck mobile product.
There are now 12 mobile casinos on the Celectivity site, which operates gambling portals for all the major mobile network operators in the UK.
Mark Jones, marketing head at Cellectivity said this week: “By adding JackpotCity to our portals we are able to offer an increasing number of games to our customers, across all of our partners, and all via one simple single portal.
“In addition to this as we increase the casinos we work with it gives the operators improved choice as to which casinos we aggregate for them, rather than a ‘one-size fits all’ approach.
“Having twelve casinos integrated means that we can also offer a range of solutions - from general casino portals, for those brands who are looking to have a substantial gambling offering, to specific content portals that feature only soft games, ideal for brands that are a lot more sensitive when it comes to offering real money games,” he said.
Gaming VC subsidiary Betboo is currently promoting what it boasts is a new online gambling idea due for launch on December 1st this year - a free service that allows online gamblers to create their own casino, sports book, bingo or poker room.
The concept is not new, however; Microgaming introduced its own player-customisable online casino last year.
Branded Mybetboo, the new software allows the player to give rein to creative flair and build a very personal gambling ambience to enjoy - and of course bet on - either with friends or alone.
Users can import their contacts from Gmail, Yahoo and MSN straight to their private members list and start attracting friends immediately.
Company spokesmen claim that Mybetboo has a remarkably user-friendly and intuitive interface through a unique grid system patented by the developers. This is apparently a vertical rectangle of 54 empty spaces where users can drag and drop different elements as they build their sites, including the insertion of Youtube videos, Flickr galleries, Twitter feeds and games from the Playtech casino and poker inventory.
Users are offered a minimum of 5 different presentations, and even a dedicated url with audience metrics and promotional aids. The idea is to generate interest, reaching out to peers in a fast and effective way, says Guto Araki, a member of the creative team. He added that the software furnishes users with a control panel through which sign-ups and how much they spent can be monitored in real time.
Almir Ribeiro, CEO of Betboo.com, says that the Mybetboo concept promotes the open development of drag and drop games and applications, also known as “pills.”
Tokwiro Enterprises subsidiary and member of the Cereus online poker network Ultimatebet is planning to warm up the competitive atmosphere in Europe with the launch of UltimateBet, a dedicated German language information website that will outline the company’s all new series of live poker tournaments destined for top online casinos Germany and the Czech Republic.
Company spokesmen said the inaugural live event will be a Euro 25 buy-in Texas Hold’Em tournament hosted in Cologne, Germany on October 24th with a Mercedes Smart Car on the prizelist.
A further tournament is planned for November 11th in Aulendorf, Germany, with prizes yet to be decided.
“We want our German players to feel as welcomed and as much a part of the Ultimate Bet community as their North American poker peers, and our live events will help create familiarity with the UB brand and the company that we are today, with an emphasis on security, safety, and the welfare of our players,” said Stephan Reschke, Ultimate Bet’s Marketing Manager for Germany.
Reschke revealed that the live tournaments in Germany recognise the growing importance of the region, and Ultimatebet will shift host venues throughout the country each weekend, with a range of affordable buy-ins and attractive prize pools. Monthly Euro 10 000 guaranteed tournaments will also be held at the Casino Flamingo, located conveniently close to the German border with the Czech Republic.
The live venues will also provide a way for Ultimate Bet’s German players to meet each other face-to-face rather than just in the online poker room, said Reschke.
Ultimate Bet is a USA-friendly online poker site and its traffic tends to peak during North American evening hours, but the development of a live tournament series in Europe should create a considerable amount of growth for the company in the future, he added.
The warrants to 2 500 000 class B shares in internet gambling group Entraction are being sold by the Global Betting Exchange Group (GBE), the parent company of Betdaq back to the online casinos company for a price SEK21 per share (Euro 2.1) currently valued at around SEK 80 million.
Entraction will lay out a total SEK 23 million (Euro 2.25 million) if shareholders are in agreement at an extraordinary general casino bonuses meeting to be convened soon.
A company spokesman said that had GBE exercised the warrants it would have created a dilution in capital of 19.4 percent. Instead, Entraction would cancel the warrants on execution of the acquisition.
”We have enjoyed the support of the Global Betting Exchange Group in agreeing to Entraction acquiring the warrants at a price substantially lower than current trading price,” Entraction chief executive Peter Åström said. “The exercise of the warrants would have incurred a large dilution at a low valuation, relative to the strong development Entraction has shown the past two years.“
He added that the purchase of the warrants will affect cashflow, but not financial results as the cost is made against equity.
NetplayTV plc, an interactive television online gambling group that is usually the bearer of acquisitive and good casino news for investors, has posted a GBP 3.2 million loss in its half year casino bonuses results, due mainly to the one-off cost of restructuring the company to take advantage of the more liberalised television regime in the UK.
The firm announced that revenues fell 8 percent to GBP 9.3 million, and that the sale of its premium rate telephony business, Abstract Games earlier this year had affected performance.
Martin Higginson, chief executive of the group said these were one-off costs necessary to secure the further advance of the company in interactive television gambling, now permitted at certain hours by the UK regulator.
“These decisions have allowed us to fully exploit the UK terrestrial TV opportunities and are an important move if we are to enter into long-term deals with major global broadcasters,” Higginson emphasised. He claimed that recent agreements with leading companies had positioned the group in a dominating position in the the UK terrestrial and digital TV interactive gaming market, enabling it to generate stronger and better quality revenues.
The company release showed gross bets up 31 percent to GBP 204 million for the half yeat to end June 2009. Management expects this to continue to grow with the addition of terrestrial TV channels STV and Channel Five in late September 2009. The number of active players has grown five-fold since launching on terrestrial TV in mid-September 2009.
NetPlay also flagged the launch its interactive mobile to TV product, with mobile gaming margin revenues increasing 450 percent to GBP 900 000 for the first half of 2009, up substantially from GBP 200 000 over same period last year.
Interestingly, the statement also revealed that NetplayTV’s recent backend live gambling deal with software provider Playtech plc had made it necessary to postpone the move of its SuperCasino live casino offshore; this will now only take place towards the end of the year.
The Las Vegas land casino gambling venues deal approximately 11 million hands of online poker a day; by comparison, the social networking games developer Zynga is currently dealing an average of 150 million hands of internet poker a day.
The comparison is a startling illustration of the power of the Internet, a medium which Zynga has turned to its advantage bigtime.
A company spokesman this week revealed that Zynga Poker (formerly Texas Hold’Em) is the number one poker game on Facebook, where high rollers and amateurs alike play join the action.
“An average day finds Zynga dealing about 150 million hands compared to 11 million hands dealt in Las Vegas,” the spokesman said. “On any day and at any time, Zynga Poker hosts 250 000 concurrent players, making it the world’s largest live casual casino and seating more than 3.5 times the audience of the average NFL stadium.”
The company has enjoyed success with other games, too, quadrupling its monthly users over the last six months, making it one of the fastest growing applications on the Internet.
In April 2009, Zynga had 30 million monthly active users playing its games, and since then the number has grown to 129 million. Every day, approximately 34 million users worldwide play Zynga games according to Developer Analytics. Zynga estimates its current monthly unique visitors are at 70 million, and the company boasts it has four of the top 10 games on Facebook:
“The rise in social gaming reflects the immense popularity of Facebook and the need for people to connect, play and express themselves with others,” said Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga. “While it is still early in social gaming, the success of our games with the user community underscores the sheer size and potential of this new movement which will finally let fun become the biggest way people interact.”
Whilst Facebook is Zynga’s biggest outlet, it’s games are also available on MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Tagged, Yahoo! and the iPhone. The company is funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, IVP, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Pilot Group, Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel, and is headquartered in San Francisco.
The Israeli casino gambling newspaper Haaretz reports that a formal model agent and two accomplices were arrested last week on charges of operating an online casino, but that questions have been posed on the legitimacy of the case against them.
Asi Vaknin was named as the main suspect internet casinos, with Naftali Goldman and Yonatan Grimberg also detained by police from the police International and Serious Crimes division.
All three are suspected of money laundering, and Vaknin may also face charges of making threats. The three men are on bail until a further court appearance this week after a remand judge remarked that further evidence needed to be adduced.
Haaretz reports that police questioned Vaknin for several hours at the International and Serious Crimes Unit offices in Lod, but he maintained his right to remain silent.
Last Friday morning, the three suspects appeared at a remand hearing before the duty judge, Esther Nachlieli-Khayat, at the Rishon Letzion Magistrate’s Court.
During the hearing, the suspects’ attorneys, Sasi Gez and Sharon Nahari, asked for proof the business in question was not legal or different from Internet gaming sites, the Haaretz report continues, quoting Gez as saying:
“The company in question has licenses. Everything is public and visible. Weren’t you in a hurry to make arrests?” Gez asked the police representative, who responded that they were in the initial stages of the investigation.
The judge also expressed doubts on whether Vaknin had broken the law.
At one point, she said: “Tedi Sagi [the reported owner of the Playtech company that provides software for online gambling sites] was my neighbor. I am somewhat familiar with the subject. What is the difference between him and the suspects before me?” .
The lead investigator in the case, Superintendent Alon Shaharbani, replied that some of the activity took place in Israel, and that police had to arrest the suspects to catch them in the act and compare their stories.
However, legal representative Nahari told the court that several huge companies, including Sagi’s, had offices in Tel Aviv’s Azrieli office tower and are “traded on the London Stock Exchange for billions of dollars, and other companies give a legal license from the right governments to those seeking it.”
Haaretz reported that Nahari also said that as long as Israeli gamblers are blocked from a gambling Web site, and the site is managed abroad, operating such a site is no crime.
The judge said legal questions in the case “spanned the globe” and needed to be answered before the case moves ahead.
Details are currently awaited on a casino news flash that a player hit a $113 940 jackpot in an online gambling session on Cryptologic’s table game Caribbean Stud Poker in the wee small hours of a online gambling weekend morning.
It has not yet been confirmed, but it is believed that the big win was achieved at Intercasino.