Tote, the 75-year old betting organization has announced a Ј5m facelift in a move to pull in more and younger punters. The company is expected to disclose further details of the rebranding at next week's Cheltenham Festival. 

Under the new revamp, all of its 450 fixed-odds betting shops and the internet and phone betting service will be called Totesport to reposition the consumer image that the Tote accepts bets on sports other than horseracing. The 59 on-course pool betting operations will be renamed Totepool. The new identity will see the group's offline shops touting the new Totesport fascia, which will also be used for its telephone and internet betting.

Sources say that the government-owned Tote will be transferred to a racing trust towards the end of 2004. As part of the deal to sell the Tote to a racing trust, the company will lose its monopoly over pool betting in seven years' time. In return, the trust will plough the Tote's profits back into racing.
TAB, the Australian betting company, could be planning to set up its own betting exchange, despite its staunch opposition to UK exchange pioneer Betfair, according to reports. 
www.onlinecasinohelper.com
Betfair cites the registration of the trademarks ‘Tabfair’ and ‘Tabexchange’, although the report gave no indication of whether TAB itself registered the names. 

TAB has had a long running battle to keep Betfair out of Australia, on the grounds that it is “a threat to the integrity of the racing industry”. Which prbably has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Betfair, and exchange betting in general, are posing a serious threat to traditional bookmakers’ profits, by giving punters an average 20% better odds than the mainstream bookies!

A squabble between an online casino and an unemployed computer programmer has finally been settled to the ‘satisfaction of all parties,’ it emerged this week. The drama, which unfolded publicly on the pages of casino watchdog, casinomeister.com, concerned a spat between gamer Brian Donoghue and Hampton Casino, after the former claimed he had won 1.2 million dollars playing their Carribean 21 game.

The RealTime Gaming powered casino, however, tried to withhold the money, because they believed that Donohue had used an automated software applet, or ‘Robot’ to stack the odds in his favour.

Aggreived, Donoghue contacted the Casinomeister website who took up the case. Then followed a series of recriminations, accusations and counter-accusations between the two parties, which resulted in RGT pulling the game to test it for flaws; none of which were found.

Michael Staw, President of RealTime Gaming said he was pleased that the two warring factions had come to a satisfactory agreement stating: “We’re happy that everything was settled amicably…this is a good example of how the gaming industry can self-regulate and still serve players’ best interests.”

“We did extensive testing of game functionality, and found that the game had not been compromised, and was working properly. It’s pretty simple, really. Hampton had a skilled player who was daring enough to play at high limits, and it paid off,” said Staw.


The new design by branding agency Fitch and the spin off from the government are a move to compete with Ladbrokes, William Hill and Coral, besides hundreds of new online casinos. 

‘We've got to demonstrate that we are in the throes of change and can compete with the major bookies, which are going gangbusters. Even our best supporters believe we are a bit laid back and behind the game. We have to change that,’ says Peter Jones, chairman of Tote.



online casino | Atlanta lawyers | Dallas lawyers | page rank  

home  1f 2f 3f 4f 5f 6f 7f 8f 9f 10f