In November last year the Orenes Group and the Betbull company signed a joint-venture agreement for the development of retail betting activities throughout the whole of Spain.

With this aim in mind both companies have recently formed a company to handle the retail betting operation within the Madrid autonomous region. The new company, called Orenes Betbull SA, will have an initial capital of two million Euos. The presentation took place in Madrid on June 12.

Cirsa Business Corporation and Casino Club have signed a global strategic agreement for the management and future development of the casino business in the key markets of Buenos Aires and Rosario. Likewise, both parties will collaborate in any future operation in Argentina that falls within the realms of gaming. In this way, Cirsa is consolidating its presence and expansion in that market.

The Spanish Tax Authority is investigating the flourishing business of on-line betting.

According to Ministry sources, “Although data is being collected no concrete measures have been taken yet.” But what is certain is that the activity of these companies, which the State General Budget for 2007 has declared illegal, is being watched.

Adeslink, has successfully initiated its service to interconnect arcades and a large number of machines have been connected in record time. Adeslink is the trade name created and registered by Andaluza de Desarrollos Electrónicos, S.A. for the interconnection of Gaming arcades and machines.

The licences for public gaming will have an equal duration of nine years and could be awarded through a public tendering process, all anyone tendering for the licence will have to do is to produce guarantees from banks or credit institutions. This is how the law should be in the opinion expressed by the Council of State in answer to the request for advice regarding the modular plans for acts of general agreement relative to the relationship between the grantor of the licence and the licence holder for the activities and functions connected with the collection of taxes from public gaming.

The European Commission has condemned Germany’s draft State Treaty on gaming, which has been proposed by the Federal German States, finding it incompatible with European law on a number of fronts. This is the second time the Commission has made a statement on Germany’s position, the first time being in March this year, when it investigated the ban on online sports betting and found it to be out of line with European law.

Preparations are underway for the innovative Touch of Sports tournament, which now includes an amazing 46 countries. “Qualifying games for player events, cups and certificates are part of our practised brand strategy and thus go hand in hand with the product as well as a new update,” says Josef Öhlinger, CEO. “Every two years we carry out the Photo Play World Games during which the world’s best Photo Play players are determined,” he adds.

Bally Wulff Automaten GMBH (i.e. Bally Wulff Gaming Machines) has been renamed Bally Wulff Entertainment.This is a logical step, according to the company, which underwent a restructure boosted by the appointment of Axel Herr.

The Japanese government plans to legalise casino gambling next year and is currently drafting the legislation. Seiko Noda of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has said that they hoped to pass the bill by June 2008.

Astro Corp., which mainly develops and manufactures gambling machines, has announced the acquisition of the exclusive distributorship in Taiwan of Sega’s latest game machine “Initial D - IIII”.

Incredible Technologies (IT) has announced its plans to return to a more basic approach to attract a wider range of customers. The innovative game maker helped create a revolution in online amusement games with Golden Tee Fore.

Knowing the importance of educating legislators, the Amusement and Music Operators Association (AMOA) visited the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C. on May 15. The programme, an annual event in the late 1980s and 1990s, had been discontinued for several years prior to this delegation of industry operators and association leaders. The trade press, plus the leaders from the AAMA accompanied the 30 AMOA members

Namco Europe/ Brent Sales has made its first entry into the Far East amusements sector with a next-generation prize vendor designed for the global marketplace. The London-based company paraded the ‘Froggit Junior’ to visitors at the GTI Expo, held in Taipei, Taiwan in May.

Sound Leisure Retail, a division of Sound Leisure, is introducing a MicroPro speaker specially designed for use in outdoor conditions. The company expects the outdoor speaker to be particularly popular with the UK smoking ban coming into effect this summer.

Stern Pinball, Inc. is releasing its newest pinball machine, Spider-Man. Designed by Steve Ritchie, Lyman Sheats, and the engineering staff at Stern Pinball, the pinball machine takes Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3 and puts them all into one fast-paced pinball machine that will excite both operators and homeowners.

Pirates is now available as a multiplayer game on all linked online Photo Play terminals. Pirates was introduced by Photo Play together with System 2006 and has since become one of the most successful games.

I am glad I do not smoke. If I did I would assuredly be very confused about where I could do so since the smoking ban came into force in the UK at the beginning of this month.

I have found no support for the views of the pub manager I mentioned last month who said the ban would extend to places like open air beer gardens if they were on the same premises as the pub itself. The majority view is that if such beer gardens are, like the “ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples” that the poet Wordsworth viewed from Westminster Bridge, “open unto the fields and to the sky, all bright and glittering in the smokeless air”, then customers using them could still be permitted to smoke unless, of course, the owners of public houses enforced their own bans.

When young Paul Gauselmann started installing machines as a sideline in June 1957, probably nobody including himself would have thought that 50 years later the one-man show would have developed into today’s global player – the Gauselmann Group. Just in time for the anniversary this year the group succeeded in generating consolidated revenues of EUR 1.007 billion thus “cracking” the one billion line.

Ritzio Entertainment has launched a new entertainment centre in Riga, Latvia.

The centre has comes under the City Casino gaming club brand which is a relatively new format of entertainment centre for Latvia.

3M has signed a new distribution agreement with Elatec Vertriebs GmbH to reach new customers in selected East Central Europe markets. Elatec will market 3M’s comprehensive range of touch products to customers in Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, providing in-depth technical support for their application specific requirements.

News that the EFTA has criticised the Norwegian government for its lottery and sports betting monopoly has brought back memories this month. Norway once had a thriving AWP market and a small show held around the Hotel Bristol in Oslo. The Norwegian situation was one of my first experiences of how the AWP sector can suffer in just a matter of months from the vagaries of legislation.

After a successful five years of working for Photo Play, CSO Marco Huter left the company on 30th June 2007. “During the past years Funworld has provided me with great entrepreneurial opportunities and much leeway for creativity. Now it is time for me to move on to new challenges,” said Huter.

Norway could be in breach of European internal-market rules by blocking bookmaker Ladbrokes from setting up gambling operations, said a European court last month. This latest move by the betting giants to attach Europe’s gaming monopolies will now be referred to an Oslo court, which will use the European Free Trade Association court (EFTA court) ruling on the law to help it decide the case.

Inspired Gaming Group has announced a number of changes to its management team. Jim O’Halleran will become Chairman, Inspired Gaming (UK) Limited, reporting to co-CEOs Luke Alvarez and Norman Crowley. In this expanded role O’Halleran will have direct operational control over two of Inspired’s fastest growing businesses, Leisure Services and Ireland, and will continue to be involved in the development of UK strategy.

GTECH Corporation has won a five-year contract to supply a server-based gaming system with video terminals to Svenska Spel – the state-owned Swedish gaming and lotteries operator.

Slovenian gaming company Hit and US casino operator Harrah's Entertainment have signed a deal on the construction of a Euros 750m entertainment and casino centre in the Gorisko region in western Slovenia, representatives of the two companies told the press in Ljubljana last month.

DEAL: short for Dubai Entertainment Amusement & Leisure Show and formerly known as Theme Parks and Fun Centers Show brought together nearly 180 international companies from over 30 different countries this year.

Brent Sales’ Fun Factory is being taken on a country-wide tour for the first time since its January launch. Tour managers John Crompton and Geoff Spencer are accompanying a select range of products on the mobile showroom which takes in coastal resorts across Great Britain over a seven week period.

TAB-Austria has already completed six additional Premium Games this year, developed exclusively for networked Silverball terminals, which have set new records when it comes to returns.

Densitron has announced the release of four new products for use with its popular DPX range of computer boards for gaming, recently adopted by IGT for use in its new M-P Series multi-player gaming systems.

The 3rd annual European Gambling Briefing (EGB) took place last month in Brussels, Belgium. Over 150 attendees, from 23 European countries, joined the impressive list of speakers.

DT Productions and Sound Leisure were among the few overseas companies to attend the Forum de L’Automatique in Paris last month. This was the first coin-op expo to be held in France for more than eight years.

Astra Games has announced the appointment of Andy Dinning as design and games development executive. Reporting directly to Product development director Ron Watts, Andy’s responsibilities will include the creative development and execution of game concepts for both the domestic UK market and Astra’s eleven overseas markets.

Norbert Langer, who has been manager of Funworld ag’s sales since 2003, was granted full commercial procuration by the company with effect from April 1, 2007. “With Norbert Langer we have a man who knows the product inside and out since it was launched on the market over ten years ago,” said Marco Huter, Funworld’s CSO.