Category Archives: Gambling

A growing number of Japanese are illegally gambling online, lured by social media campaigns and assurances from overseas websites that they can avoid arrest for their illicit bets.

Japanese police dispute the sites claims, but they do acknowledge the difficulties in gathering sufficient evidence in such cases. Many of the gamblers, in fact, are unaware that their actions violate Japanese law.

Based on this situation, some experts fear that gambling addictions could increase in Japan.

The Asahi Shimbun and the Tokyo-based Japanese subsidiary of SimilarWeb, an Israeli digital analysis support company, conducted a study on how many people in Japan were using overseas online gambling sites.

The most popular casino site was Vera & John. Its monthly number of visits from Japan increased 119-fold from 648,000 in December 2018 to 77.51 million in January 2020, the study showed.

Although the figure declined to 19.88 million in August 2020, it rose again to 49.38 million in November.

The website states that it gained an operating license in Curacao, a Dutch island in the Caribbean Sea. It also encourages Japanese participation, stressing that it offers fair and just games everyone can enjoy safely and securely.

Worry that you may be arrested for gambling? Never worry about it! the Vera & John site says in Japanese.

Most online betting site operators are said to have obtained official licenses in nations where gambling is legal. A number of them also display messages in Japanese to attract Japanese users.

There are two major categories of gambling sites: online casinos and sports betting.

Among online sports betting services, bet365 received the largest number of views from Japanese, surging from 860,000 in December 2018 to a peak of 13.2 million in July 2020, according to the Asahi-SimilarWeb study.

Bet365s site says its license comes from Malta in southern Europe.

The increased popularity of online gambling coincides with the spreading use of cryptocurrencies. Advertisements on social media for online gambling have also become more prevalent.

Overseas customers can easily register on online betting sites; they only need to enter their names, addresses, bank account numbers and other information.

While credit cards or virtual currency can be used for payments, winnings are supposed to be sent via Japanese bank accounts and other means.

Most forms of gambling are prohibited in Japan. People who gamble on overseas-based sites while on Japanese soil are in breach of the criminal law, according to police.

They said some illegal gamblers have been nabbed.We will round up as many users as possible, a National Police Agency official said.

But it is difficult for investigators to gain the consent of server managers and other parties to collect evidence from bases in countries and regions where gambling is legal.

In response to an inquiry by The Asahi Shimbun, Vera & John affirmed that it operates in accordance with the license, so betting in cash with us will not pose any problems.

The operators of bet365 did not respond to inquiries.

EASY ADDICTION

A man in his 20s in the Kinki region started gambling on the internet a few years ago to make extra money. He came across Vera & John at a time when his monthly salary was 150,000 yen ($1,422).

I knew it was illegal, but I believed I would never be arrested, he said.

On one day, he spent 10,000 yen for one round of betting and wonabout 300,000 yen.

But now, his total losses have exceeded 2 million yen, so he is much more cautious about making bets.

Once I won, my financial sense became paralyzed, he said. Its terrifying that I can gamble so easily there.

A Chiba Prefecture resident in his 50s found his eldest son, who entered a college in the Kanto region six years ago, had become addicted to online gambling.

The father visited the sons home and found bills for student loans from three agents totaling nearly 1 million yen. The son reassured his father, saying, I can turn 20,000 yen into 100,000 yen or so.

Disturbed by the delusional comment, the father intervened and repaid the sons debt. But the following day, the student borrowed an additional 700,000 yen.The father realized the near-impossible task of getting gambling addicts to stop.

He was like a car with a broken brake, the man recalled.

He had his son take leave from college to receive treatment at a facility to overcome his addiction. The son has been discharged from the rehabilitation center but did not return to his familys home.

LOW AWARENESS OF ILLEGALITY

A Tokyo-based group that calls itself the international casino institute conducted a survey in December on 1,000 Japanese in their teens or older. It found that 2.3 percent of them participated in online betting at least once. That ratio would translate into about 2.88 million people nationwide.

The gambling rate was highest among men in their 40s, at 8.4 percent, and 4.8 percent of them said they have gambled within the past year.

Only 41 percent of the respondents said they knew online gambling was illegal in Japan, while 41 percent said it fell into a gray zone, and 18 percent believed it was legal.

Takashi Kiso, head of the group, said online casinos and sports betting services started spreading dramatically in the 2010s, largely because easier payments in bitcoin and other virtual currencies became common.

Dozens of online gambling operators are believed to run Japanese sites. The user numbers are reportedly rising because people lack awareness of the illegality and gambling sites are aggressively promoting their services through social media.

According to Kiso, betting over the internet is still not as common as other forms of gambling in Japan, and the country has no sufficient countermeasures against online gambling addiction

Blocking access to those sites or other strong means will be essential, Kiso said.

(This article was written by Tamiyuki Kihara and Kosuke Tauchi.

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More Japanese gambling online, many unaware that it's illegal : The Asahi Shimbun - Asahi Shimbun

The UK neobank has teamed up with open banking provider TrueLayer to enhance the reach of its popular gambling block feature, Crowdfund Insiderreports.

While Monzo customers can currently turn on a gambling block to prevent the usage of their card for payments to gambling companies, some gambling providers are shifting toward open banking-powered payments. TrueLayer will now use an API call to notify Monzo when a customer attempts to make an open banking payment to a gambling firm. Monzo can then prevent the completion of the payment if that customer has their gambling block activated.

Solid demand for spending limit capabilities has prompted incumbents and neobanks alike to add them to their personal finance management suites to drive customer acquisition and loyalty. The ability to set spending limits more broadly for a credit or debit card is popular: More than half (53%) of respondents to Insider Intelligence's UK Mobile Banking Competitive Edge 2020 survey called that capability "extremely" or "very" valuable.

And demand for gambling blocks more specifically is driving banks to offer them: HSBCaddeda self-restricting gambling block feature in November 2019, while Starlingenhancedits own tool with a 48-hour switch-off delay in March, for example. Monzo stated that its block, which has existed since 2018, has over 275,000 usersrepresenting 5.5% of Monzo's approximately 5 million totalclients.

The enhanced gambling block is one of several initiatives Monzo has pursued recently centered on its customers' financial health.In addition to broadening its own gambling block, Monzo this week alsocalledfor UK regulators to ensure that consumers have wider access to gambling blocks. And earlier this month, the neobank announced a partnership with Experian to offer customers access to Experian Boost, a service that leverages open banking to improve credit scores,perAltFi.

Experian Boost factors in a broader range of transactional data into credit scores than does traditional credit scoring, including money earned and spent, council tax payments, savings and investments, and subscription payments to services like Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime.

These efforts that help clients stay on top of their financial health may not create competitive advantages for Monzogambling blocks are increasingly popular among UK banks and other neobanks can also integrate Experian's solutionbut they could increase existing customer loyalty as clients see Monzo taking action to help them improve their financial lives.

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Monzo's gambling block feature ups the ante with open banking - Business Insider

Some commentators reckon Facebook has called Australias bluff. They may be about to discover that Australia isnt bluffing.

The platforms own irresponsible and chaotic implementation of its Australian news ban appears to have rallied the country citizens and politicians from across the aisles and governments from around the world, to support the Australian governments resolve.

As a former chief executive of Facebook in Australia and New Zealand, Stephen Scheeler, wrote in the Nine newspapers, the company has taken an enormous gamble, betting that by taking an aggressive hard line with a middle power, such as Australia, a tough message will be sent to the rest of the world to back off on regulation.

But, as he says, there is an alternative scenario. When you pull a governments pants down in front of the world, you leave it little option but to dig in. When you vandalise 13 million citizens news feeds as a bargaining chip, you raise the stakes ... So witnessing a standoff between Australia and Facebook could be the catalyst for genuine global reform. It could be that future historians of the internet come to see this decision as the moment the world sat up and started to take serious action on making Big Tech accountable to society.

So far, that second scenario is playing out.

Its hard to think of a better way for a platform to anger a nation and destroy whats left of its own reputation than to block health and hospital sites in a pandemic, emergency service sites in a state that recently battled bushfires and the sites of innumerable welfare groups, charities and community organisations, all in a bid to avoid making payments under a new media bargaining code that aims to address the power imbalance between media companies and the big tech platforms.

Its hard to think of how to look more like an arrogant international monopoly not taking a country and its proposed laws seriously than to implement a ban with no warning and in such a ham-fisted way that a radio station could get its page back up by listing itself as a gift shop and users could still post news articles if they were posted as a link to a tweet. This is a company so sure of its capacity to bully that it was prepared to push the big destroy news in Australia button apparently without spending even a moment thinking through the consequences.

It didnt take long for comparisons to be made about how easy it had been for Facebook to shut down real, factual news and how difficult it had claimed the task of shutting down fake news and misinformation, or even shutting off the livestream of a massacre, or for questions to be asked about how a company that is supposed to be all about connecting the world could so blithely disconnect factual news from an entire nation, leaving the top-performing links to news-adjacent comedy sites and satire.

Facebooks response, that the breadth of its ban was due to the definition of news in the proposed code, makes no sense since the code is not yet law, and the company immediately began reversing some of the blocks as they were publicised by outraged users.

So far it has succeeded in strengthening the governments resolve. The prime minister says, pointedly, that threats are not a good way to deal with his government.

Google, the other media giant that faced being forced into negotiation and arbitration with news companies under the code, found a workaround.

In order to avoid setting the legal precedent of paying for news appearing in search, it has done deals of similar magnitude with Australian media companies large and small for stories to appear in its Showcase service. The government has achieved its aim of getting the platform to pay the news companies, and Google has avoided the precedent. The government retains the ability to activate the letter of the law and force payment for news appearing in search at any time in the future, as a means of ensuring the voluntary deals are not eroded over time, or denied to smaller and mid-sized publishers once the needs of the big end of town are met.

It is true that this arrangement, arrived at via the power of competition law, to even up the playing field between news companies and the powerful monopoly platforms that they cannot avoid doing business with, does not address the problem of concentration of media ownership in Australia.

But even if you hold deep concerns about that issue, as I do (it was one of the reasons we established Guardian Australia eight years ago) and even if you believe firmly that the government should act to increase media diversity, as I also do, it doesnt take too much thought to understand the danger of setting a precedent where a government uses competition law to decide which individual publishers it wants to favour and which it does not.

News Corps lobbying probably did help convince the Australian government to act on the competition regulators recommendations, and News Corp as the dominant news publisher in the country will reap substantial benefits from the code applied proportionately across the Australian publishing landscape. That is an uncomfortable reality that has caused some commentators to make the bizarre suggestion that other Australian publishers should render themselves less competitive by rejecting Googles offers, a strange idea that could only exacerbate the problem.

Writing on Medium and on the small Australian website Crikey, which was one of the very first Australian publishers to sign a Showcase deal with Google, US academic Jeff Jarvis argues Guardian Australia fell in league with the devil [News Corp] by seeking to negotiate exactly the same kind of agreement with Google as the company publishing him and most other media companies in Australia. He also claims Googles payments will not benefit journalism. He provides no evidence for this assertion, but if hes right it would be uncovered by the review to be conducted by Treasury at the end of the first year of the codes operation. Under Guardian Australias business model (we have no shareholders and operate solely to provide journalism) theres actually nothing else to spend it on.

As for Facebook, it now faces two choices. It could do deals in a similar way to Google, either voluntarily or through the formal negotiation and arbitration processes under the law, or it could stay out of Australia.

Facebook argues that journalism has a minimal upside for its business, that only about 4% of the content its users see is on their news feed. Under the logic of the code, that means it could expect to make much smaller payments than those being made by Google.

A continuing Facebook news ban does raise concerns, especially for small community news hubs, First Nations news services, or youth oriented or regional news services the kinds of sites highly dependent on Facebook. But it also highlights the dangers for them of being too reliant on a third party that is prepared to pull the plug overnight, without warning. Some of those organisations are already thinking about how they go back to basics and diversify the way they distribute their work. Should Facebook stay out, theres a strong argument for the government to help them.

Facebooks gamble is that Australia wont be able to live without it. Imagine the consequences if we prove that we can.

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Facebook is gambling Australia can't live without it. Imagine if we prove it wrong - The Guardian

Late in his life, W.C. Fields, bibulous gambler, was spotted reading, of all things, the Bible. An astonished friend asked why.

Without looking up, Fields muttered, Looking for loopholes.

That brings us to the self-destructive gambler and curious specimen, Craig Carton. Understand that compulsive gamblers have severe self-delusion in common. After weekly settling their debts with bookies, they sit at a red light in their overly financed cars, relieved and self-satisfied, telling themselves, Now Im even.

Cartons Saturday morning show on life-destroying gambling, heard over gambling revenue-reliant and invested WFAN, is surprisingly good and highly worthwhile, though Carton, the rest of the week, endeavors to prove he isnt worth any intelligent listeners short while.

For starters, on Saturdays hes a good listener. This past Saturday he allowed a recovering addict, Drew, to tell his story with Carton interrupting only to ask good questions.

On Saturdays he works clean, no sense that hes eager to reestablish his pre-prison popularity among creeps by being the stations crude, name-calling, scatological, defamatory Master Creep.

Despite (or because) working clean on Saturdays he has been entertaining, an interesting raconteur with a serious message he doesnt wield as a cudgel.

Drew, a Gamblers Anonymous member who juggled credit card debt the worst kind short of blackmail until he could no longer answer his wife with anything stronger than conspicuous lies as to what happened to their lives.

To that Carton added a Ralph and Alice Kramden farce: the time he thought hed verbally settled a debt with an A.C. casino collections agent he had the cash and, they agreed, he would come down to make good in two days. They agreed. He even challenged his wife to listen in on a second confirmation call so she could share that truth.

But then the agent told them that, no, Carton still officially had unpaid markers. Busted. And she was done believing him that it was someone elses error or fault. Its said that unlike alcoholism, you cant smell compulsive gambling. But wives can.

Carton was just another pampered high roller who lost his casinos love and VIP status to become a no-more-comps pariah because he defaulted on his credit.

Joined by Dan Trolaro of the N.J. Council on Compulsive Gambling, Cartons Saturday shows have two consistent missions:

To let people know, especially at a time when sucker sports gambling and no longer the love of sports is being shoved down their senses, that no one falls alone. Hardly.

And the only gambling system that has proven effective is to seek and sustain help. For all the bad-odds parlays WFAN pitches, Saturdays Carton show is the only one that doesnt promise to make it rain anything better than the plagues, Misery and Regret.

Saturday mornings at 9:30, Carton throws a changeup. Conditioned to success by going low, he travels a high road. His enabling, helicopter service to Atlantic City has been canceled. His federal serial number and those mug shots arent worth a spin at a penny slot machine.

Recidivism among problem gamblers is high. Arnie Wexler, a living saint for his 45 years of successfully counseling rock-bottomed gamblers, tells us that many who give heartfelt personal testimony at G.A. meetings are still plunging.

Thus time should tell if Cartons has gone straight or whether his Saturday show is an exercise in leafing for loopholes. He doesnt like me and I dont like him. But Im rooting for him.

Without the TV stars of golf Rory, Tiger, Phil to make event coverage into Access Hollywood, those who used to tune to watch golf among those in the lead or closest to it, were left to cool their Footjoys.

Thats why Sundays final round of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, sans Ams, on CBS was good on the golf senses. No names to endlessly gush over, no transparent messing around with the leader board to place the bigger names ahead of lesser names despite identical scores.

In fact, Sunday CBS was forced to cover nine players down the stretch. Aside from Jordan Spieth, CBS was stuck with the likes of winner Daniel Berger, Nate Lashley and Maverick McNealy.

The upside: genuine coverage.

I often wonder if ESPNs top executives ever take even five minutes to reflect on how bona fide sports fans feel about what the network has so purposefully become.

Put it this way: Within 24 hours of the reported latest arrest of career person of interest Adam Pacman Jones, this time accused of having kicked a bouncer unconscious (which he denies), more than a dozen emails arrived suggesting the Jones would fit perfectly with those ESPN regularly rewards with on-air employment.

Pacmans traveling team in Vegas for the 2007 NBA All-Star Game left two strip club bouncers shot, one paralyzed, according to the police. Despite an $11 million civil court judgment against him, Jones has insisted on his innocence.

This weeks arrest is different from Jones previous collars in that he no longer has pandering Roger Goodell to quietly and lightly punish him before allowing him to return to NFL teams for whom he again can cost dearly for remorselessly brutal, illegal play. Those teams deserved what he provided.

But Id suggest that a real-deal NFL steward years ago would have gone on record stating that he plans to do all he can to keep Jones out of the league so Jones could no longer feed the leagues disrepute.

In an exchange with reader Steve DeCillis about the 3-point shot having turned NBA games into heave n hope sideshows, we reached this junction: Would Wilt Chamberlain today even be relevant or just another stand-around guy? DeCillis: Would Wilt shoot 3s under-handed?

The pride of UConn stomps on: As seen but not heard never! on SNY, Wednesday, Geno The Impaler Auriemmas women needlessly humiliated St. Johns, 77-32. Two UConn starters played 34 or more minutes. UConn subs? One played four minutes, another for two.

Nothing like raucous laughter over the antics of drunks who arent funny. I agree with the daughter of the designer of the NFLs Super Bowl champs Vince Lombardi Trophy: The yacht-tossing of the trophy as entrusted to an apparently inebriated Tom Brady was disrespectful and childish.

College basketball continues to destroy itself from the inside out. Sunday on ESPN2, the last 12 seconds of overtime in Loyola-Chicago at Drake included three timeouts plus five other clock stops. Twelve seconds, eight stops!

Unaccomplished 6-foot-9 Duke freshman Jalen Johnson is bolting for the NBA after less that one season. When will all the hollow, habitual praise for Mike Krzyzewski as extra special be replaced by reality? Duke is the latest Kentucky.

Due to revisionist social justice pressures, Roger Goodells alma mater, Washington & Jefferson, this week will be renamed &.

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Craig Carton's other WFAN show is surprisingly good - New York Post

The UK Gambling Commission has conducted a review into the 2005 Gambling Act with a view to protecting the most vulnerable. The regulatory organisation aims to make online gaming safer in conjunction with the providers, ultimately preventing predatory behaviour.

By: Mark Patrickson

New rules that were published on Tuesday lashed out at slot machines in particular, while leaving online poker mostly undisturbed.

The UKGC disclosed data that showed slot machine play accounts for as much as 70% of all online gambling activity in the UK. With gambling generally getting negative viewpoints in the media it was high time that providers were forced to rein in some of their slots games to protect addicts.

Updated regs include the following changes:

The final point is the only regulatory change that affects online poker players.

Anything that helps problem gamblers is a positive change but we hope that the UKGC dont go as far as the Spanish government in banning most advertising.

The football league in the UK relies heavily on sponsorship money from betting companies. In the Premier League this is close to 50% of the clubs, while in lower leagues this figure rises to 70%.

Kindred Group, owner of Unibet, have vowed to cut out all revenue from gambling addicts by 2023. The management team will now include this information in the financial reports to ensure that players who exhibit poor gambling habits will be better protected.

It is believed that this is the very first time a gambling provider has taken such a step to distinguish between profits from high and low risk players.

This is good news, in our opinion, because the more willing the providers are to self-govern like this the more governments will be prepared to give the industry an easier ride.

Responsible gambling is a topic were all hearing a lot about lately, Hopefully as many providers as possible will get on this bandwagon to show us all in the best light possible as we strive to help those who gamble in a harmful way.

The World Poker Tour has partnered with Poker Kingwho sponsor Phil Ivey and Tom durrrr Dwanto target Asian mobile gamers during the WPT Spring Festival, running until February 22.

The mobile only series has 13 events scheduled with a tidy $1.85 million in guarantees available. Only Poker King customers in Asia will be eligible to play in the festival which provides a fantastic way for recreational players to get involved with a major organiser like the WPT.

Poker King said they currently have 1.2 million customers registered with them. Thats a good size player pool to introduce the first major mobile only series in the region.

We keep on crossing our fingers that another poker boom will come from Asia, so maybe, after all, it will come with a new generation of mobile players.

It has been a few years now since the Chinese government took aim at overseas gambling outlets targeting Chinese citizens. Its no secret that the Chinese people love to gamble and many cities around the world have stepped up efforts to take full advantage of this.

The Chinese government is now fighting hard to end what they see as predatory behaviour, even going as far as drawing up blacklisted destinations.

JP Morgans DS Kim, Derek Choi and Jeremy An said: This seems to us like a continuation of its efforts to curb illegal overseas gambling (e.g. proxy betting, video streaming and online casinos among others) and illicit cross-border capital flows since last year that have been stepped up materially in recent months. At this stage, its difficult to know exactly how the government will clamp-down and what it means by black-listing, but we suspect capital flows through underground banks and agents, as well as junkets promotion of these overseas markets, will be heavily scrutinized.

Last month the Ministry of Public Security of China announced that more than 3,500 cross border cases were investigated in 2020 leading to more than 75,000 arrests.

More than 600 Chinese suspects were brought back to China from abroad by Chinese police in collaboration with their counterparts in countries including the Philippines, Malaysia, Myanmar and Vietnam.

The ministry gave operators a deadline of April 30, 2021 to cease providing services to Chinese nationals or they will face prosecution.

ErisX, a cryptocurrency exchange operator, and an attorney called Jeff Ifrah have mooted the possibility of setting up a futures market for sports betting.

The idea is centred around helping out local sportsbooks who often face the vast majority of the market ending up on the home side. Because inter-state gambling is illegal the bookmakers have no way to hedge. This leaves them open to a seriously bad day at the office if things go wrong.

It might sound a little pie in the sky to get such an idea off the ground but ErisX filed a request with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) around Christmas which started a 90-day commenting period to investigate.

Gambling futures contracts were actually banned in 2010 but maybe some distinction can be made between this new idea and plain, old gambling.

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UK Gambling Commission Overhaul Online Regulations, WPT Targets Asia with Mobile App, and China Gets Tough over Cross-Border Gambling - HighstakesDB

A key Senate committee postponed decision-making until Thursday on whether to allow a controversial gambling bill that would allow the possibility for generating revenue for the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands through some form of legalized gaming and break Hawaiis prohibition on any form of legal gambling.

The original version of Senate Bill 1321, which would allow DHHL to develop Hawaiis first casino resort, was amended to give the Hawaiian Homes Commission five years to figure out whether it wanted to permit any form of gambling whether in the form of a casino, lottery, bingo or even horse racing in order to help clear the backlog of more than 28,000 beneficiaries who have been waiting sometimes decades for homes and land.

The House Committee on Economic Development earlier deferred the original House version, effectively killing the DHHL casino resort concept in the House.

In the Senate Hawaiian Affairs Committee on Tuesday, the Senates amended version of SB 1321 faced deep opposition from at least two of its five members and possibly three, prompting Chairwoman Maile Shimabukuro to defer it until 1 p.m. Thursday.

Committee member and state Sen. Laura Acasio (D, Hilo) said, This measure is egregiously divisive. Settler culture seems to love to watch Hawaiians fight against Hawaiians, and this measure, in my experience with constituents and those writing in, is exactly that adding to more deep historical trauma, generational cultural trauma.

Fellow Hawaiian Affairs Committee member and state Sen. Kurt Fevella, Senate Republican minority leader and minority floor leader, helped generate a petition opposed to SB 1321 that was signed by 15,600 people.

Fevella said Tuesday that he plans to vote against the bill, which he said is causing division.

Fevella, who represents Ewa Beach-Iroquois Point, said the Hawaiian Affairs Committee is kicking the can down the road while opponents have spoken loudly.

Its only getting louder, the voice, Fevella said.

The question of whether to allow the Home Lands Commission to have five years to consider approving any form of gambling on DHHL land by a so-called supermajority vote of six of nine members comes during the states worst financial crisis, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the same time, the current level of state funding for DHHL is estimated to take another century to clear DHHLs backlog of more than 28,000 beneficiaries.

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Home Lands gambling bill debate pushed to Thursday - Honolulu Star-Advertiser

The board of the Jekyll Island Authority approved Tuesday a resolution opposing any effort to bring casino gambling to the island.

There is no plan to open casinos on Jekyll Island. The resolution is in opposition to House Resolution 30 now under consideration by the state legislature.

The resolution calls for a statewide referendum authorizing a limited number of casino resorts.

The legislation does not call specifically for casino gambling on Jekyll. Instead, it seeks to require a vote from local jurisdictions that would be interested in creating casino gambling opportunities.

I understand that there are three jurisdictions in Georgia that are interested, said Jones Hooks, JIA executive director. Nevertheless, there was just recently an editorial in The Brunswick News which expressed concern about casino gambling as it related to Jekyll Island, and as a result of that editorial there was social media discussion about expressing concerns, that is this something thats being considered for Jekyll Island?

In response to those concerns, Hooks and board members felt compelled to propose their own resolution making their opposition clear.

We are proposing a resolution today that would confirm that Jekyll Islands interest continues to be in quiet, open spaces, limited traffic, limited congestion, where people will experience healthy recreation, Hooks said.

JIA has in past years expressed its opposition to bringing casino gambling to the island. As Jekyll has undergone significant revitalization efforts in recent years, the focus has been on the islands family-friendly activities and natural attractions.

It would be of concern from a management standpoint if in fact there were to be an effort to look at casino gambling on Jekyll, Hooks said.

A state legislator from Savannah expressed an interest in Jekyll Island as a potential destination for a casino if the General Assembly approved legalized gambling in Georgia. Jekyll Island is owned by the state.

The JIA resolution reads, in part, that the Jekyll Island State Park Authority Board of Directors expresses its strong opposition to any thought, discussion or action that would include Jekyll Island as a location for casino gambling; and in light of Georgia House of Representatives Resolution 30 calling for a statewide referendum authorizing a limited number of casino resorts, that the Jekyll Island Authority Board has not, does not and will not support casino gambling on Jekyll Island.

Board members also voted during the meeting to amend the language of the resolution to include clarification that the JIA does not oppose gambling in the state.

In other business, the board voted to revise and amend the 2021 fiscal year budget to allow for $130,000 for employee compensation/merit increases and $242,000 to include $150,000 for the new Public Safety Complex design, $65,000 for a Jekyll Island Master Plan update and $27,000 for replacement bicycles at the Bike Barn.

The budget, approved by the board in July, was revised from the originally discussed spending plan and took out $3 million worth of expenses. These cuts were made in response to the pandemics financial toll on the island.

We did talk about the fact that since the future was so uncertain and unknown that we would like to bring forward the idea that, if in fact after six months or so we were making good progress, that there may be some items that we would like you to realign in the budget, Hooks said. Today thats what were looking at.

In early 2020, as the pandemic began affecting island operations, JIA made significant adjustments to decrease expenditures, including at one point the furloughing of 43 percent of its workforce. One of the changes proposed and approved Tuesday was a 2 percent merit pay increase for all full-time and part-time Jekyll staff based on the normal qualifications for merit increases.

The cost for the remainder of this fiscal year will be approximately $130,000, said Marjorie Johnson, JIAs chief accounting officer.

Were not asking for any additional funds to be put into the budget at this point because our human resources expenses are $539,000 less than budget at this point she said. So well be able to absorb the increase without asking for additional funds.

Noel Jensen, chief operations officer on Jekyll, asked for consideration of a request for proposals for architectural and engineering services for the public safety complex, which is envisioned to be a 12,000- to 15,000-square-foot structure that will house Georgia State Patrol, Jekyll Island Fire Department and emergency service workers in one location. Hooks and board members recently met with Gov. Brian Kemp in Atlanta to discuss plans for the project, which will require funding from the state legislature.

The board approved the RFP to seek architectural and engineering services at a cost of up to $150,000.

A resolution endorsing the Glynn County 2021 SPLOST, through which Jekyll is set to receive $2.5 million of the $68.5 million collected if voters approve the three-year SPLOST during a referendum election March 16.

Consideration of a University of Georgia proposal for a 2021 master plan update.

A letter in support of the Brunswick Area Transportation Study (BATS) committees opposition to a proposal from the Federal MSA Standards Review Committee to raise the minimum metropolitan population from 50,000 to 100,000.

An amendment to the fire alarm ordinance.

Consideration of a contract renewal for Summer Waves management.

Consideration of a lease agreement for Tribuzios Grille, LLC, to operate the restaurant currently known as McCormicks Grill at the Jekyll Island Golf Club.

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Jekyll board voices opposition to casino gambling on island - Brunswick News

In January, a surge of investing coordinated by the Reddit channel r/WallStreetBets (WSB) caused many hedge funds to lose billions of dollars, The Daily Targum previously reported. Many people from WSB used Robinhood, a commission-free investing application, to process their transactions.

The ease with which people can now invest in the stock market raises questions about the differences between gambling and investing as it relates to platforms like Robinhood and the future of these platforms.

When you're investing, you're making educated decisions about future earning potential on a stock over the long-term, said Lia Nower, professor and director of the Center for Gambling Studies and the Addiction Counselor Training Program in the School of Social Work. Gambling is when you are staking (money) on an outcome of random chance.

She said that although both actions involve the element of risk, investing revolves more around making informed choices, whereas with gambling, people are making bets more for the action than for the long-term earning potential.

For the average individual, investing in stocks might be riskier than for a financial advisor or wealth manager. After all, the financial advisor has been trained and has years of experience looking over balance sheets and other facts, said Devin J. Mills, assistant professor in the Department of Community, Family and Addiction Sciences at Texas Tech University.

Mills said that while stock trading is a form of gambling, since one hopes their investment is going to increase in value, the definition of gambling itself should not be conflated with the extent of the risk. Stock investing does not have to be as risky or riskier than other forms of gambling, he said.

People gamble for a variety of reasons including social and financial circumstances or for the high they may get from the act itself, Mills said.

It is also possible that (the coronavirus disease) COVID-19 increased interest with additional discretionary funds and no sports or casinos or traveling People might have been looking for something to do, he said. It will be interesting to see if this trend persists after COVID-19 becomes less of an issue.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, retail accounts on trading platforms have greatly increased, with Robinhood recording three million new accounts in its first quarter, according to The Wall Street Journal.

From an analysis done by JMP Securities, more than 600,000 people downloaded Robinhood on Jan. 29 amid the rising of the GameStop stock, whereas its previous best day in March was 140,000 downloads, according to CNBC.

Nower said that the popularity of day-trading itself is not new but that it is now experiencing a resurgence due to WSB and Robinhood.

In the past, she said the infrastructure for investing greatly slowed down the speed at which someone can take risks, but now, people can take risks 24 hours a day right from an application on their phones.

With the ease of stock trading on these platforms, Nower said this likely means that more people are not fully researching the product or understanding it to invest for the long-term, but instead are conducting a flash mob, pushing the needle on a particular stock.

She said that although this method may work at times, there are people that spend years learning how to properly buy and sell stocks.

I would like to caution anyone to learn about options trading and the platforms before they start, Mills said. Trading options spreads is not risk-free. There is no financial security or trading strategy that is risk-free.

Robinhoods success and longevity depend on a number of factors, including future government regulation and recent high-profile negative press, Nower said.

Following the surge of the GameStop stock, Robinhood placed temporary restrictions on the trading of certain stocks by retail investors, or everyday users, but continued to allow insiders to trade as per usual, according to the Targum.

The app is now facing dozens of lawsuits from several states, and its CEO, Vlad Tenev, is expected to testify on Thursday in front of the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, according to The Verge.

There is also a court case brought by the parents of Alex Kearns, a 20 year old who died by suicide when he saw his Robinhood account balance was at negative $730,000 and was not able to get into contact with Robinhood employees about what he actually owed, according to CNN.

Nower said she anticipates more regulations for Robinhood and similar platforms coming in the future.

This type of behavior can really destabilize the financial markets for the country. So it's not like there's not a risk in general to a lot of people's 401(k) (plans) and a lot of things that could get wiped out, depending on how unstable the market becomes, she said.

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Experts explain investing versus gambling, concerns regarding increase in online investing - RU Daily Targum

The new transformations that are happening in the modern-day are about technological advancements in the field of gambling. And the first thing is this list is many new faces life Gclub and Sbobet that showed up in the industry after pandemics.

With the cryptocurrencies dominating the world, they will also trend in the gambling world. The casinos have started to accept the different types of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. It is a secure way to play, and people prefer it more. Thus, this could be a much-needed transformation.

With cryptocurrency comes privacy, as the cryptocurrency doesnt demand details and anonymizes the owners. It has led to many people playing and online with using crypto as a matter of payment and various VPNs to cover or protect their identity, as it is safe and anonymous. It can be possible for areas with restricted access or no casinos. Thus, this is a venture for growth.

Everyone has access to a mobile phone nowadays. It has led to the encouragement of free to play games. There are simple ways of how these games can make money. They can pay minimum amounts for playing or upgrades or get perks. And thus, the habits of the consumer are changed.

With people confined to their homes, they want to have a live dealer experience like the land casinos. It gives the players the feel of the real deal when playing from the comfort of their homes. It also helps engage the player and gives the required human interaction and charm that certain games require.

VR is a great way for people who want to enjoy a real-life experience without actually having to do so. The trend is on the rise, and people are in favor of VR based casinos. There are versions of some of the popular gambling games, and there is a huge demand for others.

With the world shifting toward online options, land casinos have seen a decline. Even though their online versions are still benefitting, the land casinos are suffering. People prefer to play online in the comfort of their own homes. They dont have to dress up, and it also saves the time and money spent on a commute to and from the casino. The online versions also provide more privacy than the land versions. Online gaming also can be done from anywhere anytime and not to mention the perks they provide.

The gambling industry now caters to a larger audience with the introduction of upgraded slot machines. The games have become skill-based and reduce the luck factor. The younger generation that is used to play video games and gaming consoles can enjoy this.

There are other transformations like using smartwatches, introducing new table games, etc. these are some of the trends that will help transform the gambling and casino industry scenario in 2021.

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Trends Transforming The Gambling And Casino Industry In 2021 - Business MattersBusiness Matters

Digital Banking

The pilot scheme will block gambling payments and card transactions to any operator supported by TrueLayer.

Two and a half years after Monzo became the first bank to introduce a gambling block, the digital bank has teamed up with TrueLayer to create an industry-wide open banking-powered gambling block.

The two fintechs have launched a pilot scheme using open banking to block gambling payments and card transactions to operators supported by TrueLayer, with the hope that other players in the industry will follow suit.

When activated, the block lets users stop transactions to bookmakers, both in-person and online, and places limits on cash withdrawals.

If a customer wants to turn off the function, they have to go through a 48-hour cooling-off period and even speak to someone in the customer support team, with the added friction hoping to deter problem customers.

In a blog posted this morning, Matthew Parish, product manager at TrueLayer and Albert Cabre Juan, open banking lead at Monzo, wrote: Open banking providers offer a unique opportunity to help gambling operators seamlessly support those experiencing gambling harms - and empower consumers to stay in control of their finances.

Initiatives like affordability checks to flag at-risk players earlier, spending limits to help ensure players do not overextend themselves, and friction-free identity checks can all be improved using open banking.

According to the fintech dream team, the new function was built by Monzo and TrueLayer engineers in just a matter of days.

The blog post continued: By enabling the right types of protections for all players, gambling can remain a purely social activity, rather than one with life-altering negative effects.

The latest update to Monzos app comes after the digital bank called on the government to ensure everyone has access to gambling blocks, co-authoring a petition asking for gambling blocks to be made the norm.

To date, more than 275,000 Monzo customers have activated the gambling block and less than 10 per cent have ever switched it off permanently.

In 2020 alone, an average of 2,314 people every week have turned on the gambling block for the first time.

A year after its inception, Natalie Ledward, a vulnerable customer analyst at Monzo and the Monzonaut responsible for the gambling block, was named Your Consumer Champion at the Which? Awards 2019.

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Monzo and TrueLayer team up to launch industry-wide gambling block - AltFi