A Gambling Year in Review - Part III and IV
Rarely a week goes by when one of the online casino operators that we work with don't make the news. More often than not it's for a good reason but they do have their moments.
Online Casino Operators
On the whole, online casinos had a good year. But few had a better twelve months than 32Red who won the EGR Casino Operator of the Year award at the end of November to cap it all off. Just weeks before that award 32Red's CEO Ed Ware spoke exclusively to CasinoOnline.co.uk.
But it hasn't all been rosy for online casinos. William Hill has been at the centre of a few headline grabbing stories this year. It began when they took legal action in order to prevent their joint venture partners Playtech discussing a similar deal with Ladbrokes.
Fortunately for those involved this was resolved three months later when Hills and Playtech agreed a revised deal.
Fast forward five more months and Hills were at the centre of a staff boycott that saw 180 staff fail to turn up to work and ex-Mossad agents brought in to ensure the safety of technical equipment.
Other companies that had up and down years were Betfair and Ladbrokes. The latter were hoping that 2011 was to be a breakthrough year for their online products.
However things didn't quite go to plan as Ladbrokes failed to complete deals following talks with Sportingbet and 888. Despite this, definite improvements have been made by the company to many of their online activities.
Betfair also haven't had things go their way with a number of top execs leaving and dropping share prices. Despite these setbacks, things have picked up for the Hammersmith based company, highlighted by the fact that they recently served their 4 millionth player.
It may not surprise many people but some strange things often happen in the gambling and online casino world. Here's a collection of some strange and not-so-strange stories of this year, including a thieving nun and a piece of Michael Jackson's hair.
Random and Weird
This is just a tiny selection of the many things that went on this year in gambling. For some reason gambling seems to attract people of a slightly strange persuasion and in 2011 they were out in force.
November saw one of the supposed luckiest days ever as 11/11/11 rolled around. At the time of writing we were unsure as to whether this proved to be true for any lucky gamblers.
It was also a profitable year for some as the sale of gambling.com was completed for an incredible £1.5 million. This followed on from the previous year's sale of slots.com and shows that the online gambling industry is continuing to prove popular.
There were also some slightly stranger stories such as a nun from New York accused of stealing more than £500,000 to feed her gambling habit (get it?).
Some hopeful con artists had obviously been watching too many films as they attempted to scam a casino by using contact lenses that showed invisible ink. The scheme even began to work but saw them arrested during their second trip to a French casino.
The year was coming to an end and we thought everything was winding down – how wrong we were. In the last few weeks of 2012 this bizarre story emerged regarding Michael Jackson’s hair being turned into a roulette ball.
