iGaming News

Bulgaria notified the European Commission of its draft Gambling Act amendments on 2 October, closing the procedural gap that left Lithuania's promotion ban unenforceable. The text, still out to consultation and not yet before parliament, would end affiliate licences in January and charge online operators at least €100,000 a month.

A week after closure notices put eight Washington card rooms on course to shut on 30 November, Maverick Gaming's founder says he is buying them out of the bankruptcy and that the deal will close within three weeks. No buyer entity, price or court filing for the sale has been made public, and a new owner needs the state's gambling licence.

The Åland operator behind mycasino.ch will give Meta licence documents and website addresses so Facebook and Instagram can tell Swiss licensees from offshore operators and their affiliates. Meta has said nothing publicly, and the pilot comes a week after Dutch operators took the platform to court.

IG's core trading business kept more customers and less of their money in the third quarter, and the London-listed broker has cut its 2026 growth outlook to mid-single digits. The US fantasy and prediction-market operator it agreed in July to buy for up to $1.3 billion more than doubled its revenue, but that deal has not closed and the business is in court with six states.

The London-listed events group is paying 11.1 times Clarion's expected 2027 EBITDA, part-funded by a £940 million share placing. The gambling industry's largest trade show is about to pass from private equity to a listed owner that names gaming as a growth category.

Seven candidates filed on Sunday for the 18 October election to replace Takeharu Yamanaka, and Yamanaka is one of them. The frontrunner, backed by four ruling and opposition parties, has ruled out an integrated resort, and the others oppose one, seven months before Japan opens applications for its two remaining licences.

At her first policy panel as gambling minister, Vicky Foxcroft told a Labour conference audience that the consultation on scrapping the Gambling Act's "aim to permit" rule is coming "very shortly". She did not say when, or what will replace a principle that has governed every betting shop and arcade licence decision since 2007.

A month after taking office, Kangwon Land's first permanent chief executive since 2023 has set up a committee to diagnose the company and test the feasibility of its flagship resort plan. The review lands while the only casino open to Koreans is waiting on Seoul for the exemptions the plan depends on.

Betano, Superbet, Sportingbet and EstrelaBet now send Brazilian visitors to a government page that says their platforms are offline by order of Provisional Measure 1.394. Justice Luiz Fux let the operators' midnight deadline pass without a decision, and R$1.33 billion of unclaimed player money now passes to the banks.

Pennsylvania's regulator took almost 9,700 new self-exclusion enrolments in the year to June, more than in any year it has reported, and the monthly figure beat the year before in every month. The same week's reports show the state's casinos ended the year with 598 fewer staff as play kept moving online.

Two associations of gaming regulators have told the Supreme Court that the same Kalshi contract is shielded from state law in New Jersey and subject to it in Ohio, and that only the Court can end that. They follow a group of state lawmakers in backing New Jersey's petition; nobody has yet filed for Kalshi.

Spelinspektionen has revoked the restaurant casino operator's licences with immediate effect, pending a final decision, because the people behind it face charges over a predecessor company that ran almost the same business. The regulator is treating tax and bookkeeping failures as a fitness question, not a side issue.

The federation has extended its betting purge from referees and players to the boardroom, provisionally suspending 448 current and former officials of top-two-division clubs on 30 September. The officials now face bans of three months to a year, and two of the best known say they bet through legal accounts.

A Chicago judge has found that Kalshi's championship contracts are likely swaps and that Illinois likely cannot make the exchange take out a sports wagering licence. She has not yet ruled on the state's new 1.75% to 3.5% prediction-market fee, and her reasoning puts her at odds with a Wisconsin judge in the same circuit and with two federal appeals courts.

The Ohio Casino Control Commission has told Polymarket, Robinhood, Coinbase and seven other platforms to stop offering sports event contracts to Ohioans and confirm it in writing within 14 days. Kalshi, the company that lost in the Sixth Circuit, did not get a letter: its $5 million penalty case is already under way.

A cheater reached high-stakes online poker players through the table-management tools on their own computers, not through the poker rooms. The rooms hold the hand histories and the money, and they are now deciding what to refund and how to stop it happening again.

Law 86-26 is in the Gaceta Oficial and the new regulator has an interim chief, but the decade-long licence freeze has not started. It begins only when a register of existing operators is published, more than a year from now, and the months before then decide who is inside it.

Maine's regulator says it is monitoring the use of AI "locally and nationally" after the New York Times report on DraftKings, which takes about four in every five dollars bet with the state's mobile sportsbooks. Its draft rules for online casino, the product at the centre of the Times investigation, are open for comment until 30 October.

Ohio's governor has called prediction markets "really gambling, nothing more than that" and promised enforcement after the Sixth Circuit ruled for the state. The commission's proposed $5 million penalty against Kalshi has been pending since April, and Kalshi says the ruling will not survive further review.

Polymarket has confirmed it is challenging the Dutch gambling regulator's order in court, after being charged for blocking Dutch users a day late. Its case is that event contracts belong with the financial markets supervisor, an argument that, if it won, could land it under the Netherlands' indefinite ban on selling binary options to retail clients.

A law in force since 1 October ends the Supervisory Authority for Regulated Activities' veto over concession contracts, including casino concessions, and abolishes the Concession Council it dominated. The regulator must pass its concession files to the finance minister by the end of the month, as the government weighs whether to close it altogether.

The first month to reflect the higher rate brought in 108% more online gaming duty than a year earlier, more than the rate rise alone explains. The industry says one month proves nothing; the Treasury, three weeks from a Budget that may double Machine Games Duty, may read it differently.

The Upper Tribunal has ruled that free spins won on a free promotional game fall outside Remote Gaming Duty, reversing the First-tier Tribunal and wiping out the assessment against the Super Group subsidiary. With the duty now at 40%, the ruling reaches well beyond one operator, unless HMRC appeals or Parliament changes the law.

The team behind iGaming SkyTalk, the new interview series recorded on a parasail 200 metres above Golden Bay, explains why the industry needs another show, why it opened with an architect rather than a chief executive, and why the format is only half the pitch. "The setting gets your attention. The conversation has to earn the rest of it."