NEWS & NOTES

Bally’s Corp. has announced that it is partnering with Maverick Gaming to open a new poker room inside of the Tropicana Las Vegas. Dubbed the Maverick Gaming Poker Room, the facility will host daily tournaments of No Limit Hold ‘Em with games featuring $1 small blinds and $3 big blinds as well as $2 small blinds and $5 big blinds, all while touting the lowest rake on the Strip. The room is expected to open sometime in June, but terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed. • New-York based Rockefeller Group, famous for its flagship Rockefeller Center, recently purchased seven acres in North Las Vegas for $4.3 million to be used for two industrial buildings totaling over 145,000 square feet. It also recently broke ground on another similar project in the area, the 134,000-square-foot Nellis Logistics Center. • The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board has banned five people from all Pennsylvania casinos after they were caught leaving children unattended in cars as they gambled. According to the board, the five players banned left a total of nine children between the ages of 2 and 13 unattended while playing slots or visiting sportsbooks in Pennsylvania casinos. • Anders Ström, the enterprise founder of Kindred Group (formerly Unibet PLC) has detailed rifts between him and the former C-level team of the business led by ousted CEO Henrik Tjärnström. In an interview with Swedish business news source Dagens Industri, Ström. who founded Unibet in 1997, expressed his dissatisfaction at “being kept in the dark” from key strategic decisions with regards to the company’s U.S. business and the development of its technology platforms. Kindred has been involved in a management shakeup as several top executives have resigned. • L’Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), France’s gambling authority, reported May 26 that gambling in the country had achieved record gross gaming revenues of €12.9 billion for 2022. Nevertheless, the market highlighted “disparities of French gambling” with private companies competing against monopolies. Thus 64 percent was generated by FDJ and Pari-Mutuel Urbain (PMU), the monopoly operators for the National Lottery, sports betting and horse racing. The year also saw the country’s brick and mortar casinos return to growth after losses experienced during the pandemic. • The Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) recently hosted a delegation from the Gaming Commission of Ghana. The MGA shared information about its licensing and compliance procedures, criminal probity assessments, anti-money laundering supervision processes, and risk-based approach to regulation. The trip also included visits to four land-based casinos. • The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) announced Monday it will hold an emergency summit Tuesday with Churchill Downs after 12 horses died in the past month at the famous Lexington, Kentucky race track. Seven horses died from training or racing injuries at Churchill Downs leading up to the 149th Kentucky Derby. HISA will review information and analysis in an effort to understand what happened and suggest changes.