Pragmatic Games for Spain & Portugal

After recently being awarded a licence to operate in the UK last April, Pragmatic Play has now secured a licence to distribute its slots games in the Spanish and Portuguese market. 

The news comes after both the Spanish Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ) and the Portuguese Gambling Inspection and Regulation Service (SRIJ) have approved the company’s online games for distribution.

The certification is an expansion of Pragmatic Play’s continued plans for international growth, having gone live in Denmark back in August.

Yossi Barzely, Head of Business Development at Pragmatic Play, commented: “We’re very proud to have been given the green light in Spain and Portugal as we look to expand worldwide.

“It represents another breakthrough for Pragmatic play and highlights our commitment to our European expansion in regulated markets.

“We’re certain that our existing suite of games and forthcoming titles will prove to be just as popular with players in both countries as they have been elsewhere.”

The Receipt of Lottery from Czech Republic

Czech Republic is set to release a new receipt lottery by October as part of the electronic cash register system launched in 2016 to help fight tax evasion.

According to the local daily Hospodářské noviny, under this new scheme receipts will act as lottery tickets in a draw. Players will be able to register free of charge through a mobile app or website; however, they will only be able to buy one receipt per day in order to prevent illicit transactions.

The Ministry of Finance will be in charge of controlling the lottery results and will present a report in a year to evaluate its efficiency. The aim of the receipt lottery is to motivate people to insist on getting receipts for their purchases. 

According to the Ministry of Finance, Ivan Pilný, the benefits of the scheme should exceed the operational expenses: distributing over 65m crowns a year in winnings, whilst tackling tax evasion. 

It is expected that each month the state will give away over 20,000 prizes. The winner will receive a cheque for one million crowns, and the second prize will be a car worth 400,000 crowns. Other winners will receive prize money ranging between 300,000 and 20,000 crowns. 

Similar lotteries have already been launched in several countries across Europe, including Croatia, Slovakia or Slovenia. As in Czech Republic, the main reason was to motivate customers to demand receipts for their purchases. For instance, Slovakia rolled out receipt lottery in 2013; and in two years they were able to reduce transactions carried out without receipt by 50%.

The Electronic Cash register, designed to provide the state with immediate information about cash transactions at venues, was launched in December. Pubs, restaurants and accommodation providers were the first to start using the system, followed by retailers in March of this year. Other business, including lawyers, doctors or accountants, will need to register in the system in 2018.

Colombia Gaming License

Colombia has granted this week its second online gambling licence to lottery and chance games operator Corredor Empresarial S.A. The country’s regulatory body Coljuegos announced on Monday it has issued Colombia’s second official licence to the local firm, which will operate sports betting, slot machines, roulette and other games of chance under the Betplay.com.co domain. 

The licence, which is set to last five years, was worth over $1m to Colombia’s watchdog. Coljuegos President, Juan B. Pérez Hidalgo, said that this move will contribute to the nation's health care funding. Additionally, the government hopes to raise COP 8b ($2.6m) in the first year following its online market regulation.

This news comes after Corredor Empresarial signed a series of gambling technology agreements with European providers Kambi Sports Solutions and R Franco Digital last June. The now-online gaming operator already manages over 25,000 retail points of sale across the country.

Colombia has become a promising ground for gaming operators after being the first Latin American jurisdiction to formally approve online gambling last October. Earlier this summer, back in June, Medellin-based electronic gaming machine operator Aquila Global Group obtained the first-ever licence to operate online in Colombia using the Wplay.co brand.

However, the South American nation has blacklisted over 300 foreign operators to ensure that locally-licensed operators generate sufficient revenues. Coljuegos has began blocking international domains in July.

What Casinos are The Best?

Each day list of best online casinos for real money grows rapidly. The shifting of casino games to Internet space became a great step in the development of gaming sphere and allows players to gamble without going out.

The history of online casino is rich for the facts and events in the disregard of a small period of its life. All began in 1994 when the first online casino opened its doors over the Internet. Check best mobile Microgaming casino that one can notice the pioneer in the online gambling sphere. That time the choice of casino games was really bad and included several slot machines and types of poker, two variants of online roulette and pair of card games.

Nowadays the line of Microgaming games offers a huge range of the online casino games of different themes and parameters. Also, the gaming market met such providers as Real Time Gaming, Playtech, Betsoft, Endorphina etc. They all have released many new ideas to the development of gaming market. Recently thanks to the cutting-edge technologies gamblers saw the opportunity to play roulette or Blackjack with the live dealers. Besides you can do it on your PC. Such innovation had the real gap and tendency of the providers to move nearer gamblers to the real game in casino place without visiting the land-based place of the chance.

Another novelty is the mobile casino that allows enjoying casino games wherever you are. The growth of the collection of casino games increased the number of the players and the popularity of the virtual places at the whole. It permitted to the casino owners do not stint for the Bonuses. Nowadays the best online casinos offer their customers perfect list of the hot promotions in order to increase the range of the gamblers. Also, you are going to be amazed by different interesting tournaments that allow competing with each other.

The gambling industry appeals not only the compulsive players but also frauds. With the shifting of online casinos to the virtual place, the founders of online gambling had got a lot of problems with the hackers. Eventually, programmers did a great job to create the mechanism of data encryption that was able to save the player’s information. Moreover, online gaming places became to give guarantees of the fair play by means of cooperation with the famous auditors as Testing, Technical System etc.

How will online casino for real money change in future?

There is no secret that the demand for the online casino will be at the high-level thanks to the many advantages of this sphere. For the years of the gambling existence, a lot of problems and cons were cancelled thanks to the professional developers. The online casino has many pros among which are profitable Bonus prizes and the huge sums of the progressive jackpots with the high percentage of the payouts.

Even now internet casino reached the high altitude that does not slot to amaze the fans of this sphere, beginning from the classic. However, online casino games also show the huge progress. To be sure, the famous casino software providers have got the great storage of the fresh ideas for the future. Of course, the virtual place will be comfortable and safe by means of the graphics and Bonus sales.

Casino Development of California State

Officials from the California state assembly have ratified a tribal gaming compact for the Wilton Rancheria tribe, paving the way for the tribe to develop a $500m casino in Elk Grove.

Elk Grove Assemblyman Jim Cooper introduced bill AB1606, which was approved by a unanimous 68-0 vote late on Thursday. The compact will now be passed to California State Governor Jerry Brown for final sign off before being vetted by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Speaking after the vote, Cooper said: “This is an important milestone for Wilton Rancheria, the people of Elk Grove and the Sacramento Region.

“I was proud to author this legislation and I am proud of my colleagues in the Legislature for giving it their overwhelming support.”

Wilton Rancheria’s tribal status was terminated in 1958, and the Tribe was finally restored, without land, in 2009, after a long-fought campaign by tribal elders.

The Wilton tribe is planning to build a casino on 36 acres on the site of a defunct mall on the south side of Elk Grove, having purchased the land from The Howard Hughes Corporation earlier this year. This land was then placed into trust by the US Federal Government, as required by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (1988).

Its proposed Elk Grove casino would include 110,000 square feet of gaming floor, multiple restaurants, a spa, a 302-room hotel tower and a convention centre. The newly approved state compact allows the tribe to operate up to 2,500 gaming devices.

In a statement, Wilton Rancheria Chairman Raymond C. Hitchcock said: “We are extremely pleased and humbled by the strong support the Tribe has received from the community, the Legislature and the Governor,”

“It’s a very good day for the 750 members of Wilton Rancheria, the community of Elk Grove and the greater Sacramento region. Now it’s time to get on with building this project, which will create thousands of jobs and invest of hundreds of millions of dollars to improve city and country services.

“The vote represents a huge step forward in our long journey to have land, a home and a place where we can pursue our economic development goals.”

The growth of Macau Gaming

According to data released by Macau Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) increased in August 20.4% year-on-year basis.

The regulatory body has announced on Friday that casinos generated nearly MOP22.68bn (US$2.81bn) over the last month. With these figures, the Cotai District continues its 13-month streak of revenue increases.

Overall, Macau’s total GGR for the first eight months of 2017 reached MOP172.02bn, rising 19% from the same period last year.

However, Typhoon Hato on 23 August caused extensive damage and forced some hotels and casino resorts to temporarily suspend their operations, so it is not a direct comparison. Grant

Govertsen of brokerage Union Gaming Securities Asia Ltd said: “As we noted last week in our series of on-the-ground notes post-typhoon, we believed that trends were returning to normal quite quickly and still expected a growth rate of over 20% for the month,”

"We further expect September to be in the high teens. All-in, the third quarter 2017 the growth rate could shake out to be broadly in-line with the second quarter growth rate in the low 20% range.”

Gambling Act of Czech Republic

The government of Czech Republic has announced its plans to restrict online bonuses and free bets, citing concerns over alleged links between these promotions and problematic gambling.

Last week, the Czech Ministry of Finance issued a document detailing its fears over operators’ bonuses, which it says induces customers to new gambling problems, and thus should be strictly controlled. 

“The casinos, appealing to instant and seemingly easy winnings, have become typical not only of the suburbs of the Czech cities, but also of the centres of smaller municipalities, and all of the related socially harmful activities pose a threat to public order and peaceful coexistence,” read the government report.

The report published late August states that the application of the law will be within the jurisdiction of the authority responsible for issuing and implementing permits. It also claims that “given the fact that gambling is an area of business that carries a negative social cost, as it causes pathological gambling and associated undesirable manifestations in a particular part of the population, a new legal framework has been put in place to improve consumer protection, the conditions under which gambling can be run, and not only the conditions relating to the direct provision of gambling, but also related activities such as advertising and others.”

This new legislation fits into the Czech Republic’s overall strict Gaming Act. Earlier this summer, legislators passed this policy which aimed to defend consumers’ rights and protection by controlling players’ spending.