
Massachusetts Lottery May Soon Offer DFS. Massachusetts AG Maura Healey, that has used a framework for the regulation of DFS in the Bay State.
The Massachusetts Lottery Commission is proposing modernization that is sweeping and has formally stated its intent to look at online ticket product sales, as well as offering its own daily fantasy sports and social video gaming products.
Massachusetts happens to be making noises about adopting a comprehensive online gaming package for a while, as it seeks to complement its emergent land-based casino industry and successful lottery product with a more up-to-date and competitive offering that is online.
While online casino gaming and poker would require a huge upheaval that is legislative DFS and social video gaming wouldn’t normally ( at least within the Bay State), plus it’s clear that Massachusetts is intent on creating its own fantasy activities item as an easy method attracting the younger generation that eschews traditional draws, scratch cards and keno in favor of newer, mobile-friendly trends.
Formal Invitation
As such, hawaii has launched a formal ask for information (RFI), inviting companies to submit ‘proposals for the development, implementation, functional support, and maintenance of the Massachusetts Lottery iLottery System,’ read a statement that is official.
This would include ‘the development and integration of digital versions of existing and lottery that is new, including but not restricted to social video gaming and day-to-day dream recreations options.’
Of particular interest towards the Lottery Commission are player authentication and registration protocols, aswell as best practices for responsible gaming controls.
The commission also states that it is searching for ways of integrating lottery admission stores to be able to protect the 7,500-odd businesses that are small count on lottery sales commissions.
Homegrown Product
‘We believe the introduction of a fantasy sports platform at Massachusetts Lottery would help to embrace an emerging market while continuing to protect our retail partners,’ Lottery Executive Director Michael Sweeney told the Information Service recently.
‘ This particular sort of game would perhaps not cannibalize our existing products. It might obviously be a product that is new. It would help us to activate that which we would refer to as a ‘next-generation’ player and hopefully it would also help Lottery generate a new revenue source compared to eroding or keeping existing offers.’
Throughout the edge in ny State, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was railing up against the ‘fraudulent’ nature for the DFS industry, but Massachusetts’ AG Maura Healey has declared that we now have no federal or state rules that preclude such sites from running.
Healy has proposed regulation that is full of, drawing up protocols to protect consumers, and has said that state residents who play DFS should ‘not be concerned’ club player casino lobby which they are breaking the law.
In the end, there’s nothing incorrect with adopting only a little local innovation, and DraftKings, born and bred in Boston, is possibly benefitting from being truly a homegrown success story.
India Supreme Court Panel Recommends Legalizing Sports Betting
Former India Supreme Court Justice Rajendra Mal Lodha is recommending that the nation legalize cricket betting and gambling in order to crackdown on corruption. (Image: The Hindu)
Asia is one step closer to legalizing sports betting and gambling after a panel appointed by the nation’s Supreme Court recommended modifying the longstanding gaming ban in order to combat a growing epidemic of illegal wagering.
Home to over 1.2 billion people, India is the second-most country that is populated the world.
Now three lawmakers, former Chief Justice Rajendra Mal Lodha, along with retired Justices Ashok Bhan and RV Raveendran, opined to your Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) that legalized activities betting would offer more transparency and cut down on rogue backdoor wagering.
‘It [betting] would serve both the game and economy if legalized,’ Lodha told reporters on Monday, adding that the market must certanly be exposed, but only with extensive safeguards in place to ensure that players and those with direct ties to sports matches are barred from participating.
2013 Scandal
Last January, India’s Supreme Court formed the panel, with Lodha serving as chairman, in response to the 2013 Indian Premier League match-fixing scandal that rocked the sport and dominated headlines.
Though the sport of cricket is no stranger to controversy, the events of 2013 were unprecedented.
The lengthy investigation by Delhi Police led to charges against 39 individuals and two-year suspensions for the Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings cricket teams.
The match-fixing that is widespread illegal betting led the BCCI to make a plan to improve its infrastructure and appearance for techniques to mend its moral standing.
The acts that are criminal led to intervention by the Supreme Court and Lodha’s panel concluding that BCCI and India should embrace a controlled gambling market to eliminate unlawful betting systems and precisely monitor players and officials.
BCCI Unlikely to Embrace New Vision
Cricket is probably the most popular activity in India, and while the game’s governing body claims it wants to clean its league up, the federal government might not be so eager to ending gambling prohibition.
Except for horse racing, gambling in Asia has been illegal for nearly 150 years.
In addition to proposing legal cricket gambling, Lodha’s outline additionally suggests transforming the BCCI’s power framework and organization from top to bottom. The BCCI has remained mum on the Lodha report up to now.
The decision to authorize gaming and sports betting doesn’t reside with the BCCI; that task goes to officials on the state and levels that are federal.
‘ The federal government will likely keep it alone as it continues to be a contentious issue,’ India Bet Managing Director George Oborne told eGaming Review.
Gambling has mostly been a states’ rights topic over the full years, but of the nation’s 29 states and seven territories, just three have taken steps to expand the industry: Goa, Daman, and Sikkim.
Though gambling can provide revenues that are substantial monies for local governments, numerous in India believe any expansion of gambling additionally leads to an expansion in crime, corruption, and money laundering.
Lodha argues gambling’s currently there, albeit illegally, and that swift action must be taken.
‘With big cash and attention, there is not the caution that is necessary protect the sport and its own players from the orgy of excess,’ he stated.
2nd PokerStars Boycott Struggles to Make Impact After First Effort Fizzled
Ike Haxton, who resigned on New Year’s as a PokerStars Pro in protest at the changes to the VIP system day. (Image: pokerstars.com)
A second PokerStars boycott by high-stakes and high-variance players is apparently failing woefully to make a discernible dent, at least on the site’s traffic numbers.
Around 1,600 players signed up for the protest, according to organizers.
The previous week, while Sunday, January 3rd remained on par with figures from the same day the previous week per industry number-cruncher PokerScout.com, while traffic dipped on January 1st, the first day of the strike, it actually rose on January 2nd, in comparison with the same day.
Of course, it’s impossible to know just how much the dearth that is sudden of stakes players affects PokerStars’ daily rake, and whether all the players who pledged to stay out have in reality proved real to their word.
The boycott, which is due to end Thursday, January 7th, has been organized by several groups including WeArePokerPlayers.com and Tiltbook.com, along with a number of high-profile, high stakes players on the 2+2 forums, in protest towards a major overhaul to the VIP system, which took effect on January 1st.
PokerStars announced in November that these changes would include scrapping Supernova Elite rewards for 2016, despite the achievement with this status being a process that is two-year.
Boycott Backfired?
PokerStars claims that the modifications are designed to improve the poker ecology, however they leave high-stakes, high-volume players high and dry.
While these players represent some of the site’s most avid, long-lasting, and high-ranking players, they tend to be net-withdrawing players as opposed to the hordes of net-depositors that the online poker giant is anxious to attract.
The first boycott took place between December 1st and 3rd, with 2,600 players joining in the sit out. But that occasion clashed with the PokerStars Christmas Festival, so traffic figures remained comparable, except that those high-stakes players were replaced with lower stakes players attracted by low buy-ins and jackpot rewards.
While PokerStars is probably to have raked less throughout that period, it declared itself vindicated by the boycott december.
‘During the three-day boycott we recorded the healthiest consecutive three-day ecosystem outcomes of the season with steady net gaming revenue, despite the fact that our net-depositing players lost at a much lower rate than they will have all 12 months,’ wrote Eric Hollreiser, VP of Communications for PokerStars and Amaya.
More Boycotts Planned
The players that are affected undeterred, but, and are determined showing PokerStars they can make the operator’s life hard.
And more boycotts are planned in the future. WeArePokerPlayers.com has launched a campaign searching for 5,000 signatures to accept at the least a strike that is month-long while other protestors have recommended that a 10,000-player boycott could reduce PokerStars’ rake by up to 30 percent.
On New Year’s time, Ike Haxton became the second high-profile PokerStars Pro to resign in disgust at the modifications, following exemplory case of Alex Millar, whom severed ties aided by the site just before the getaway duration.
‘As a four time Supernova Elite, I am aware what it requires to rake 1M VPP in a year,’ had written haxton on 2+2. ‘It’s a grind that is tough. For some of the players who do it, it is a commitment that is all-consuming intense than most full time jobs.
‘Many of them have relocated far from their homes and families to pursue it,’ he added. ‘Finding out, just as you approach the finish line, that your efforts won’t be rewarded as you expected them to be is brutal. I cannot in good conscience carry on to endorse a poker site that treats its players this way.’
