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News summary

Lots going on, but very short of time lately, here's a quick look at what has been going on...

Sportingbet are keen to be acquired by Ladbrokes, but the 'Magic Sign' are nervous about SB's activity in Turkey, one of the strongest regions of their business. If Sportingbet are serious about the sale going through, looks like they will have to sell that part of the company.

The Betfair share price keeps on tumbling, not even the internal buyback scheme can stop the price sliding, sliding away...

The Gold Coast Turf Club is targetting night racing as a way to move themselves up the ladder of Australian racing. Sounds like a positive move, the weather's great up there but when they run their feature Magic Millions Day in January when it is approaching 40C, that's ridiculous. The racecourse does need a serious upgrade to its facilities if they want to become a bigger club, getting into the Friday night rotation of meetings would probably serve them better than being the sixth-ranked meeting on a Saturday, ignored by the majority of punters.

Veteran American tennis player Robbie Kendrick has been banned for 12 months after traces of MHA were found in his system when tested at the French Open. Kendrick claims to have checked online about the ingredients of the tablets he was given by a friend, but didn't spot obvious errors on the company website, and wasn't able to provide the investigation panel with a list of websites he visited because 'he was in the habit of clearing his browser history regularly'. Hmm, a man travelling the world on his own, spending a lot of time in hotel rooms.... why would he need to do that? Lol. On the face of it, it's a fair penalty, but it is unjust when you compare it to confessed HGH trafficker Wayne Odesnik who only received an eight-month ban and is back playing in this week's Washington event.

Questions have to be raised about the value of gaming licences in certain jurisdictions with the Full Tilt Poker/Alderney scandal. How valuable is a licence in one of these territories when they have no local consumers to protect, and thus are more inclined to care about the tax money arriving instead...

Bet24 have informed their clients about a security breach. That's all very nice, you know it can happen, but I'm sure they're working hard to stop it ever happening again, we can forgive them for that. It's not until you dig closer that you learn these events happened between 2007 and 2009! So it wasn't until the story was in the public domain by going to court that customers learned of it. Disgraceful. No surprise that these clowns are licensed in Malta, a jurisdiction with an ever-withering quality of gaming licence.

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