Sports betting lifts Illinois; Packer in a pickle

The handle boiled down to $7 million in revenue, as baseball season, NBA and NHL playoffs more than made up for the absence of college football, let alone the scrapped NFL preseason. Imagine how strong the market will be once mobile wagering takes full effect and a complete slate of providers is available. Almost all of the $7 million was netted by Rivers Casino Des Plaines, which also saw $118 million in retail and online handle. Down at Casino Queen, a very distant second-place performance was made by DraftKings, with $13 million in handle. (Not great when you’re sitting on the doorstep of the St. Louis market.) In only four days at Par-A-Dice, FanDuel generated $4 million, not bad when you consider the circumstances. Gouker thinks FanDuel and DraftKings will eat into Churchill Downs‘ huge head start in Des Plaines … but they’ve got a helluva long way to go.

Just when it looked like James Packer‘s new Sydney casino was out of the woods with New South Wales regulators, “threatening” e-mails from the bipolar billionaire surfaced. Testifying under oath, Packer weaseled, accepting “not all, but some” responsibility for Crown Resorts‘ renegade conduct. He blamed incidents like the arrest of The Crown 19 in China on underlings who kept him out of the loop. (Would that be ‘plausible deniability’?) As for the e-mails themselves, which are being kept under under, Packer made “verbal threats” against “Mr. X” of “Z Co.” (Let the speculation begin.) Asked a prosecutor, “How can the NSW regulator have any confidence in your character or integrity in light of your conduct in these emails?” “Because I was sick at the time,” said the boss.

Conveniently, Packer claims that one of his psychotropic medications impairs his memory of events prior to 2016, i.e., just after the damaging e-mails were sent. Already words like “unfathomable” are being used to describe Crown’s lax anti-money-laundering regime and its closeness to organized-crime figures. Supreme Court judge Patricia Bergin‘s investigation has turned up that Crown was warned of money laundering at its casinos but chose to turn a blind eye. At stake is the license for a multi-billion-dollar megaresort in Sydney that was to have opened in December. In addition to poor AML enforcement, Crown is charged with having business relationships with Chinese triads—an angle that has drawn Melco Resorts & Entertainment into an unwelcome spotlight. Melco CEO Lawrence Ho was so spooked by the probe that he cut and ran from his buy-in to Crown at a loss of $330 million.

The arrest of The Crown 19 four years ago was not the company’s first brush with Asian law enforcement. That same year, Crown staffers in South Korea were detained by authorities. Former high roller recruiter Jason O’Connor confessed that Crown “may have blinkered” by profit motives and that “some of these customers appear to have links” to organized crime. “There does appear to have been failures in our processes; that’s been laid pretty clear.” For instance, Crown dealt directly with Suncity Chairman Alvin Chau Cheok Wa, despite the latter’s alleged involvement with triads and money laundering, which has kept him out of Australia. It also transferred a large sum of money to a Melbourne drug dealer on the strength of the assurance that he was a “good friend” of a casino junketeer. False assertions of “gold star” AML compliance by a Crown director have also not helped the company’s case.

Interviewed by Global Gaming Business, iGamX Managing Partner Ben Lee was aghast at Crown’s conduct, saying, “They blithely ignored the arrests of the Korean marketing staff, they operated offices without permits, and worst of all, they actively promoted gambling in a country [China] where promotion of gambling is a criminal offense.” He also notes negligence on the part of regulators themselves, who allowed Crown to pick and choose its junket partners without public vetting. “There is no due diligence conducted by the authorities. I think one of the more obvious outcomes is that Crown failed that test.”

That’s a loophole that Crown could still wriggle through, providing that no further untoward e-mails come to light. Before the Packer disclosure, a slap on the wrist and tighter AML controls appeared inevitable. However, the industry needs to be sent a message regarding Crown’s outside-the-law behavior. Crown certainly does. It should be stripped of its Sydney license. James Packer might finally get the message, provided it’s loud enough.

Betting on the New England Patriots this year? Better take a week off. Although Cam Newton is asymptomatic for Covid-19, praise be, his return is uncertain, even indefinite. Then again, after suffering through three quarters of dopey QB Brian Hoyer and one of promising but erratic Jarrett Stidham, the Pats brain trust has to itching to put Newton back under center. Then again, the team’s next opponent is the injury-riddled Denver Broncos and Josh McDaniels has tipped that Stidham has earned a second chance. Give him one.