UK

The Board of the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) has approved a proposal from the Professional Jockeys Association (PJA) that the Code of Conduct regarding sponsorship of professional jockeys by bookmakers should be relaxed, on a trial basis. Betting operators will now be permitted to sponsor individual jockeys, as opposed to the previous regulation which only permitted sponsorship agreements involving 50 …

Ahead of its annual general meeting set for 14 May, The Irish Examiner reports that Paddy Power governance is expected to continue to return its surplus cash to investors in the coming years. In March Paddy Power governance announced that it planned to return a dividend of €390 million, representing 12% of its current market value. Paddy Power who were …

Payment provider Worldpay has partnered with games studio Play’n GO to deliver a new platform that will enable gaming operators to support a broader range of payment methods and currencies and develop a more customised gaming experience. Integrated with the Worldpay WebDollar payment solution, the new Play‘n GO platform will boast a tailored cashier service which supports multiple languages, 30 …

Formbet leads the Bet Advisor form table at the end of March in what has been a competitive month of sports. March ends with a betting yield of +100 combined with a win rate of +65%. We have also seen a new set of Bet Advisor Junior tipster become top performers showing the calibre of our betting tips product. So …

London AIM listed igaming marketing and player acquisition specialist XLMedia published its year end 2014 financial performance recording top line metric growth on all key metrics. A successful 2014, saw XLMedia increase gross revenues by 47% to $50.7 million (FY 2013: $34.5 million). The operator was able to report EBITDA growth of 28% to $17 million (FY 2013: $13.3 million). …

Having announced the launch of its ‘Betfair Predicts’ mobile app last week, Betfair marketing has further expanded its political content by adding political betting blogger Mike Smithson to its team ahead of the UK General Election in May. Smithson a former Liberal Democrat politician and founder of popular politics blog PoliticalBetting.com, has been hired on a consultancy basis and will …

Ahead of a General Election in which none of the parties have garnered popular support, Lord David Lispey has perhaps captured the mood of the nation by branding the Government ‘tossers’. Lord Lipsey has called the Government ‘a bunch of tossers’ for not implementing the Gaming Machine (Circumstances of Use) (Amendment) Regulations – which requires anyone playing with stakes above …

Culture Secretary Sajid Javid has appointed three new Gambling Commissioners to the regulator’s 10-strong board.  Alison Hastings and Trevor Pearce CBE have both been given 4 year terms, while Jonathan Scott has been given 5 years. Alison Hastings is a Non-executive Director and Vice President of the British Board of Film Classification, a Press Complaints Commissioner, a Non-executive Director of …

A director of troubled online betting brand 666bet was reportedly arrested last week by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and the  National Crime Agency in connection with their joint investigation ‘Operation Bannock’ into money laundering and fraud. This weekend The Independent newspaper revealed that a further six people and had been arrested, as 13 properties in Chester, London, Guernsey and …

Following this week’s announcement of record breaking corporate performance with EBITDA earnings of €49 million, gambling investment firm GVC Capital has been speculated as a potential acquirer of operator bwin.party. Throughout 2014, bwin.party has been subject to speculation of a takeover or a sale of its individual business assets. This March bwin.party Chairman Philip Yea confirmed that the operator had …