Each week, CasinoBeats breaks down the numbers behind some of the industry’s most interesting stories. Today we take a look at Japanese integrated resort delays, advertising crackdown, a US acquisition and Flutter Entertainment’s quarterly financial performance.

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The Advertising Standards Authority has reasserted a pledge to harness innovative technology to tackle misleading or irresponsible ads as the self-regulatory organisation publishes the findings of its latest online monitoring sweep.

Aiming to identify and tackle age-restricted ads appearing in children’s media; across a three month period the ASA found that 159 age-restricted ads broke the advertising rules, 70 of which were betting adverts.

In total, 35 advertisers were found to have placed age-restricted ads on 34 websites and five YouTube channels aimed at or attracting a disproportionately large child audience.

Breaking down the figures across five product categories, the aforementioned beaches across the gambling sector were reported as emanating from four unidentified operators and appeared on eight websites.

Advertisements for food and soft drinks classified as high in fat, salt or sugar were reported as the most prevalent with 78 different ads from 29 advertisers appeared on 24 websites and five YouTube channels.

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Flutter Entertainment has documented a three-pronged approach designed to provide PokerStars with a significant global push, as the gambling group outlines international acquisition ambitions and dissects its H1 performance in its latest financial report.

Lauding a significant quarter which saw completion of its The Stars Group merger take place, Flutter pinpoints a hypothesis that “PokerStars’ historically high profit margins were driven, in part at least, by under-investment”.

To that end, Flutter has highlighted 3 core areas of marketing, promotional generosity and product, technology and customer experience, where the group feels there are opportunities to make additional investments.

Accounting for the Stars Group purchase, Flutter has reported a revenue increase of 21 per cent year-on-year for the first half of the year to £2.38bn (2019: £1.97bn) with adjusted EBITDA finishing at £684m, up 31 per cent from £523m.

Characterised by a ‘normal’ trading environment during Q1 and widespread sporting disruption during H1’s second phase, sports revenue increased seven per cent during the period to £1.19bn (2019: £1.11bn).

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The Betting and Gaming Council has revealed a raft of new measures aimed at preventing under-18’s from seeing gambling adverts online.

The latest BGC crackdown came upon publishing of the ‘Sixth Industry Code for Socially Responsible Advertising,’ which will come into force on October 1.

This states that BGC members must ensure that all sponsored or paid for social media adverts be targeted at consumers aged 25 and over, unless the site can prove its ads can be precisely targeted at over 18s.

The new code also includes a requirement that gambling ads appearing on search engines must make clear that they are for those aged 18 and over, as well as a mandatory requirement to include safer gambling messages.

YouTube users will also have to use age-verified accounts before they can view gambling ads, guaranteeing that they cannot be seen by under-18s, while members will have to post frequent responsible gambling messages via their Twitter accounts.

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Las Vegas headquartered Galaxy Gaming has closed its $12.425m acquisition of Progressive Games Partners, anticipating that the transaction will be immediately accretive to earnings per share.

First announced in February, it was said that of the consideration at least $6.425m, but no more than $10.425m, will be paid in cash, with any amount not paid as such being done so through newly issued shares of Galaxy’s common stock valued at $1.91 each.

Having been operational in igaming since 2003, PGP owns the exclusive worldwide online rights to a suite of proprietary casino table games, including Galaxy’s.

Galaxy says that the purchase is strategically advantageous due to the enhanced exposure to the igaming market that will be felt, which is forecasted to bring significant growth, especially in the US.

Furthermore, it eliminates the distribution fee that Galaxy pays to PGP on Galaxy-owned games and gives the group additional igaming licensing revenue from titles owned by other licensors.

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Osaka has confirmed that its continuing integrated resort ambitions remain on pause amid current uncertainty regarding the coronavirus pandemic, in addition to a number of delays to the publication of the country’s ‘Basic Policy Plan,’ reports GGRAsia.

With Japan’s basic policy said to have been revised several times, and uncertainty of when a final publication date will arrive still looming, under the current circumstances it is reported that the region would find it “difficult to proceed” with its request for proposal process.

The Osaka prefecture and city has now followed the lead of Yokohama in stating that it will wait to see the basic IR policy of the government, as well as assessing the COVID-19 impacts, before determining a strategy to move forward.

“Under the coronavirus situation, the process related to IR has been suspended from the time when previously the prefecture and city announced the postponement of the RFP submission deadline, on June 23,” Hirofumi Yoshimura, the governor of Japan’s Osaka prefecture, is quoted as saying.