iGaming Business – GamCrowd, a new crowd-funding and sourcing platform that aims to help start-up companies in the gambling industry, has opened its registration site for potential investors. The service launched in December, as previously reported by iGaming Business. “We are launching in two phases,” GamCrowd chief executive Chris North said. “We are taking registrations from start ups and investors now but won’t start matching the two groups for a month or two. “We need some time working with the start-ups to ensure they are ‘GamCrowd Fit’. Once we have a sufficient number of quality start-ups and a pool of…

Reuters – William Hill, Britain’s largest bookmaker, said on Monday it was sticking to a planned timetable to replace its veteran CEO in 2015, despite a media report it wanted a successor in place this year. The company said it still envisaged a new CEO would take over next year, the previously announced retirement date for Ralph Topping, who has spent over 43 years with the firm, and became CEO in 2008. The Times newspaper reported on Monday that the bookmaker was seeking to replace Topping a year earlier than expected and would look to hire someone from outside the…

iGaming Business – CasinoBitco.in, the Bitcoin-only gaming service and sportsbook, has acquired Bitcoin gaming properties Bit777.com, Peerbet.org and Peerdice.org from online gaming solutions provider Ultraplay. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. CasinoBitco.in, which has been operating since May 2013, offers HTML5 blackjack, roulette, baccarat, video poker and Hi-Lo in their casino. Bit777 offers more than 50 flash-based games while Peerbet.org provides an interaction platform, raffles, a proprietary ‘wheel’ game, dice and more. Peerdice.org, an offshoot of Peerbet.org, is a new community ‘versus’ style dice game with only a 0.3% house edge. CasinoBitco.in announced its strategy to expand the…

Card Player – Despite it being an election year in the Golden State, online gambling expert Chris Krafcik thinks it has the best chance, among other U.S. states, of getting something done in 2014 with regards to web poker. Krafcik is the Research Director (North America) for GamblingCompliance and for years has been monitoring developments there. Right now, just Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware have legal — and operational — online wagering. Others are considering it this year, but in many spots the chances appear low. California is home to the nation’s top tribal casino industry, and Krafcik said that…

iGaming Business – Social gaming company Zynga has filed to offer up to $126 million (€92 million) on behalf of some of the new shareholders it obtained during its acquisition of mobile gaming firm NaturalMotion, according to the Wall Street Journal newspaper As reported by iGaming Business last month, Zynga announced that it completed the purchase of NaturalMotion in a deal worth around $527 million. Under the agreement, Zynga said it would issue 39.8 million shares. The company registered 28.2 million for sale on behalf of the shareholders on Wednesday (February 12). Balderton Capital, the earliest investor in NaturalMotion, is…

Poker News – Sheldon Adelson’s first campaign against online gambling in the new year achieved only moderate success. The Las Vegas Sands CEO’s Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling only managed to get 15 state attorney generals to sign a letter to leaders of Congress requesting that the Wire Act be amended to prohibit all forms of Internet gambling, including poker. Adelson must have at least hoped to get the majority 26 signers necessary to make the position an official National Association of Attorney Generals policy and use the organization’s letterhead. Instead, the letter went out Feb. 4 on plain paper….