Spin Cycle: Colin Farrell Goes To Macau; Maverick Won’t Go To SCOTUS

Welcome to “Spin Cycle,” Casino Reports’ weekly Friday roundup of all things impactful, intriguing, impressive, or idiotic in the gambling industry. Pull up a chair, grab a stack of chips and a glass of your beverage of choice, and take a spin with us through this week’s news cycle …

Big ‘W’ in Washington for tribal sovereignty

Six weeks ago in this here Spin Cycle space, we wondered if Maverick Gaming’s lawsuit over a “tribal gaming monopoly” would go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Tuesday, we got our answer.

SCOTUS declined to hear the case, to the delight of the Washington Indian Gaming Association (WIGA) and supporters of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA). 

Maverick had challenged a 2020 law allowing sports betting on tribal lands only in Washington.

“Today’s ruling is a decisive win not just for Washington’s tribes, but for tribal sovereignty and sound gaming regulation nationwide,” WIGA Executive Director Rebecca George said in a release. “Washington’s tribes have shown that legal, transparent, and regulated gaming works. This decision confirms that IGRA’s balance between tribes and states remains the law of the land.”

The decision was announced during a tribal gaming session at the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) in Las Vegas. 

George added in the release: “WIGA is committed to ensuring safe, well-regulated gaming. We’ll fight to protect Indian gaming and keep unsavory characters out of gaming, just as IGRA intended.”

Netflix and tilt

“Just give me one more hand. I can pay you.”

Those words, spoken by Colin Farrell in the trailer released this week for the Netflix film Ballad of a Small Player, offer a pretty good sense of what we’re dealing with here. The gambler who owes someone money and believes they can gamble their way out of it? Not exactly the first time a screenwriter has conjured such a protagonist.

Still, encouragingly, the rest of the trailer hints at something a bit different from the generic Hollywood gambling flick. And the “something different” starts with the location. There will be no shots of the Bellagio fountain here. This ain’t Vegas. It’s Macau.

Three-time Golden Globe winner Farrell plays Lord Doyle, who is in Macau, drinking, playing table games, and accruing debts, while consorting with criminals and watching bodies plummet past his hotel room window. Further plot details are difficult to decipher from the trailer, but we know it co-stars Tilda Swinton and is directed by Edward Berger — director of Best Picture nominees Conclave and All Quiet on the Western Front.

Ballad of a Small Player will be released to “select theaters” next Wednesday and will be available on Netflix Oct. 29.

The poker news shuffle

A few quick hits from the world of poker worth noting:

• Cory Zeidman, who won a World Series of Poker bracelet in 2012, was sentenced Wednesday to 46 months in prison and three years of supervised release for conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Zeidman was arrested in 2022 for running a sports pick-selling service that claimed to have inside information on games and, after initially denying the allegations, he pled guilty last year. The court is recommending he serve his time at a minimum-security federal prison in Pensacola, Fla.
• Green Valley Ranch Casino in Henderson, Nev., has announced it will reopen its poker room — closed since the COVID shutdowns of 2020 — before the end of the year. According to a Green Valley Ranch social media post, the poker room is coming back due to popular demand and will feature 16 tables.
• Poker vlogger Brad Owen, who has 788,000 YouTube subscribers, had one of his channels shut down in late September, allegedly for violating YouTube’s “circumvention” policy, but the channel was restored following an appeal. This was the latest development in a series of struggles for gambling streamers and content creators since YouTube enacted new gambling content policies in March.

House Rules: Insights from around our network

RENDERINGS VS. REALITY: Bally’s catches the car [by David McKee]

RUSH PAYMENT: Rush Street enters partnership with BurraPay [by Chris Altruda]

MORE THAN WORDS: Responsible gaming lobbyist: Industry must put money where its mouth is [by Jill R. Dorson]

HOT SUMMER ACTION: Internet casino revenue hits $912 million for August [by Chris Altruda]

PEDAL TO THE METAL: Can prediction markets accelerate online casino legalization? [by Steve Ruddock]

WHERE DO WE GO NOW?: Sweepstakes casino operators ponder strategy amid California difficulties [by Chris Altruda]

FRIENDS, NOT FOES: Is iGaming a cannibal or catalyst? Different experiences call for different approaches [by Brian Joseph]

I AM NOT LISTENING TO JEFFREY: No one wants to hear your gambling stories … except this one [by Jeff Edelstein]

CAPITAL CARDS: Washington D.C. mayor renews push for poker, blackjack [by Chris Altruda]

SCHUETZ TAKIN’ SHOTS: A round of dealer’s choice [by Richard Schuetz]

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?: Short-seller bets against DraftKings, says analysts downplay ‘tectonic’ prediction market effect [by Jill R. Dorson]

LOGGING OFF: Las Vegas Sands ends digital gaming project [by Chris Altruda]

Small stakes and hot takes

This week on the Casino Reports podcast Low Rollers, I welcome Nigel Eccles, the co-founder and CEO of crypto casino BetHog (and the co-founder of FanDuel), for a conversation covering AI blackjack dealers, when cryptocurrency will be widely accepted in U.S. iGaming, how big a threat prediction markets are to regulated operators, and more. Here’s a taste:

I also discuss this year’s G2E in Las Vegas and all the attention paid to prediction markets, plus I talk briefly about the decimation of survivor-pool entries last weekend and having no regrets about a failed gamble. Full episode:

The Shuffle: Other news and views

PENNSYLVANIA BUTTS IN: PA House committee passes bill that would ban smoking at casinos, bus stops [Pittsburgh Union Progress]

WHEEL DEAL: Evolution’s Lightning Roulette suit against L&W sent to arbitration [SBC Americas]

ETERNAL OPTIMISTS: Caesars expects improvement on Las Vegas Strip, analyst says [CDC Gaming]

MAKES YOU GRIMACE: McDonald’s reboots ‘Monopoly’ despite gambling addiction risks [Gambling Harm]

PLAYING KOI: Judge orders federal government to take Koi Nation land out of trust, blocking casino [The Press Democrat]

NEW SET OF TOOLS: DraftKings adds another brick in its RG wall with Evive integration [SBC Americas]

ONWARD AND UPWARD: Bally’s casino hotel tower starts going vertical [Chicago YIMBY]

A LOT TO RECOMMEND: LOTREC GAMES making a push for U.S. distribution of its table games [CDC Gaming]

TORCH SNUFFED: Torch lured business in Missouri with illegal video games, federal jury finds [Missouri Independent]

The Bonus Round

Completing the Spin Cycle with some odds and ends and our favorite social media posts of the week.

• BoltBetz, a cashless-gaming company that lets casino players digitally load funds onto slot machines, has found itself the baddest pitchman on the planet. Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson is joining BoltBetz as a strategic investor and promotional partner as the company prepares to launch its product in Nevada. No truth to the rumor that he only signed on because he misheard and thought the company was called BoltBites.

• Save the dates! On Friday, Fanatics announced initial details for Fanatics Fest 2026: The fan festival expands from three days to four, running July 16-19, at the Javits Center in New York City, and tickets will go on sale in early November.

• Big win of the week: An anonymous player at the Venetian in Las Vegas turned an $11.25 slot spin on Buffalo Power Pay into almost $2.27 million by hitting the Wheel Bonus and scoring the Power Grand Progressive jackpot. Oh, ya know, just your average everyday 201,667x return on investment.

• No detailed spoilers for those who aren’t caught up, but it’s worth a note here in Spin Cycle that in the latest season of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, there’s a major plotline involving an effort to open a Manhattan casino. Can’t wait to find out next week if a Community Advisory Committee shoots the idea down.