Calvin Ayre – While it didn’t quite the reach the initial £500 million estimates being thrown around last week, the Cheltenham Festival still proved to be a gold mine for UK bookmakers, both in terms of betting handle and customer acquisitions. That’s how big the four-day horse racing festival has become in the UK. Throughout the week, more than £250 million in bets were taken, a staggering figure that was compounded even more by the boost in new customers bookmakers were able to acquire during the entire week. It figures that with 67,814 attendees on the final day alone, Cheltenham…

iGaming Business – The Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill is set to come into force in the UK after being given final approval by the House of Lords. Subject to Royal Assent, the new bill will see the Gambling Commission licensing system cover all UK remote gambling operators. Under the current Gambling Act 2005, remote gambling operators that locate their remote gambling equipment overseas do not need a remote operating licence from the Gambling Commission, whereas UK-based operators are required to have one. The new bill would require all remote gambling operators in the UK market to obtain a licence…

Poker News – While Portugal’s national government keeps working on the new online gambling law that was supposed to be approved by February this year, the Authority for Food and Economic Safety (ASAE) continues its war against illegal gambling and has announced the closure of yet another non-authorized casino. “We have already closed around 25 illegal casino rooms only in the Norte region (Northern Portugal),” said ASAE inspector Rute Serra in an interview published today by Portugal’s daily Journal de Noticias. Discussing ASAE’s latest anti-illegal gambling operation, Serra spoke about illegal gambling as a phenomenon on the rise, followed by…

In an effort to appeal to a younger generation, Australian poker machines are seeing changes to prizes, layouts and themes. According to a recently-released 2013 report from GamblingData.com, casinos and poker machine venues around the country are dealing with diminishing numbers from younger demographics. In an attempt to return boost their appeal, venues are changing prizes to include real products like Apple computers, as well as introducing machines with themes based on popular television shows and movies. Where is the younger demographic going? Internet and mobile gaming. International finance agency Credit Suisse has stated recently that both the Australian and…

Vietnam’s go-ahead for locals to enter one of the country’s casinos for a trial period has set off a rat race to lure gaming investors in a country where local leaders have been chiefly judged by economic growth rates alone. In August 2013, the Communist Party’s decision-making Politburo allowed Vietnamese meeting certain criteria to gamble in a casino to be built in the Van Don Economic Zone in Quang Ninh Province bordering China. Vietnamese tycoon Dao Hong Tuyen and US firm ISC Corporation are investing in the US$7.5 billion project that includes a casino, marinas, a convention center and golf…

A consortium of will build a new South Korean casino, which will be a first for the country. Caesars Entertainment and Indonesia’s Lippo conglomerate has received a preliminary license to build the resort near the country’s largest airport, stepping up competition among Asian countries to lure Chinese tourists. The Indonesian-U.S. consortium plans to spend 743.7 billion won ($696 million) to open a casino town in Incheon in 2018, the nation’s culture ministry said in a statement Tuesday. It is the first South Korean casino license given to foreign investors, though a final approval is pending. It will become the country’s…