Not good news for our online casino operators

This month’s online casino news here at onlinecasino.ie concerns two of our biggest online casino operators, Paddy Power and William Hill. First we look at some rather disturbing news from Paddy Power, who have been forced to contact 650,000 of their online customers after apparently discovering what they have called a historical data breach dating back as far as 2010. They have now managed to retrieve the data with help from Canadian police and have been able to assure their customers that none of the data in question included any financial information or passwords, but incidents like this serve to confirm that we should all be very careful how we use any online sites particularly those which by necessity hold our personal details. The latest online casino news regarding William Hill is very different. On the day that James Henderson took over the reins from Ralph Topping as chief executive the company reported a 15% fall in per-tax profits for the first half of the year, blamed almost entirely on two extremely bad weeks for all bookmakers when both football and horse racing results cost them a lot of money. Apparently the losses would have been even worse except for the World Cup gambling which netted them a £28 million contribution to first half profits. Mr Henderson was also outspoken about the current political environment for the gambling industry and when asked whether he thought it was becoming more hostile replied that he did not believe it could become more hostile than it already is. He was of course referring to the recent increase in tax on the fixed odds casino games machines in betting shops, and the proposal by Labour for a multimillion pound levy on sports gambling should they win the next election. It would appear that things are getting tough for the online casino and online sports betting operators, as their share prices have recently demonstrated.