Live dealer provider Evolution Gaming has had to increase the size of its studio facilities in Riga, Latvia by a thousand square metres to handle growing business demand following a spate of new user contracts that has included Party Gaming and William Hill Online, the company reported this week.

CEO Jens von Bahr said the expansion represented a 400 percent increase in capacity for the company.

“Our transformation of one of Riga’s oldest buildings into a 24-hour state-of-the-art casino gaming TV studio is the next step in our plans to expand our product and platform offering in 2009,” said the Evolution CEO.

Unspecified discrepancies in its 2008 published accounts have been cited as the reason for further delays in the release of the Redbet Holding AB first quarter 2009 results.

Several business news outlets have reported that the Swedish and Malta based online gambling group has postponed its annual general meeting and delayed the publication of its first quarter results.

Redbet operates GoldClubCasino.com, TotalPoker.com and OptiBet.com, and has seen its share price fall dramatically due to the present uncertainty. Last year, the group announced that it intended to move its online casino, poker and sportsbook operations to Malta after receiving the the island’s license approvals.

The group has a number of divisions; Redbet Limited and Redbet Finance Limited, are both based in London, Redbet Technology AB is in Stockholm, Pullmangaming NV in the Netherlands Antilles and SIA Teletoto based in Latvia.

Within the scope of Redbet Ltd’s gaming operations is the offering of poker, casino and sports betting via Redbet.com and online bingo via Mingelbingo.com. Redbet Ltd also offers a sports betting service presented via Redbet Ltd’s proprietary betting exchange. Also within Redbet Ltd is a licensing operation through which the company offers total solutions for companies wishing to set up online gaming services.

Reuters news service reported this week that the group has decided to prepare a new Annual Report for the fiscal year 2008, due to ‘discovered discrepancies’.

The Gambling Commission compiled some statistics regarding complaints and claims that Internet sites undermined the integrity of sports games and concluded these to be unfounded and with no basis. As a brief backgrounder, some national sports leagues expressed concerns that on-line gambling somehow is conducive to rigging games that results in corruption.

The Commission generally gets about fifty citizens’ complaints in a year about some suspicious or less than honest betting activities but around half of these (or about 25 of the complaints) were generally unsubstantiated and based on mere allegations. Only a few complaints were judged credible enough to justify continued inquiries. But there was no significant change in the number of complaints before and after legal sports betting was introduced.

What is more important is that powerful computers and sophisticated tracking systems like the one at Betfair.com can easily identify and warn of highly suspicious betting patterns in their early stages. Most governing and regulatory bodies have recognized the important benefits of these recording software to unmask betting scams in some major sports .

Chairman Brian Pomeroy asserts there is limited evidence about these concerns but still admits that the Commission is giving top priority to combating these real risks to betting integrity. In a surprise twist, the highly-respected USA Today printed an article about the growing dependence of some sports bodies on advertising revenues that could also affect their integrity and increases the potential for corruption. These college sports bodies are quite vocal regarding their opposition to on-line gambling on the same grounds by which they are being examined right now.

Now that Joan Rivers has bested poker champ Annie Duke at “Celebrity Apprentice,” let’s look back to comments Rivers made to Poker News Daily last week before the grand finale.

Needless to say, the poker world today is seething at Rivers’ win on Sunday night.

Poker News Daily: Why did you sign up for Celebrity Apprentice? What was appealing about the show?

Rivers: The fact that Melissa and I could have five weeks together was very appealing. The challenges of the show were also appealing. I love a challenge. Celebrity Apprentice has been very good for my charity, God’s Love We Deliver. It’s a local charity for me and I’m very involved with them. We’ve raised over $125,000 for them.

PND: You’ve had an ongoing clash with poker player Annie Duke. In your opinion, when did the feud start and why?

Rivers: It started from the very beginning. Annie is a very good poker player obviously, but plays people like poker. Poker should be kept at the poker table. God knows I love poker. If you look at that painting with the dogs playing poker, I’m the fifth one on the right. Suddenly, it evolved into “Joan doesn’t like poker players.” I started in Las Vegas.

My downstairs neighbor plays slots, so it’d be like me saying, “I hate slots.” It got out of hand and became ridiculous. My father worked his way through medical school playing poker. What I do like about poker players is that they keep the masseuses up all night in Las Vegas. No one uses masseuses at night except for poker players and entertainers.

PND: You mentioned to Piers Morgan on last week’s episode that your biggest problem with Duke is that she is manipulative. Can you explain how she’s manipulative?

Rivers: It’s not a “fun” manipulative, if you know what I mean. We all know how to play each other. We’re all good business people. You don’t invite yourself out to dinner with me and then go tell Brande that I asked you, but I didn’t ask her.

PND: What was your own strategy coming into the game?

Rivers: I used the same strategy that I have used throughout my life and it’s been a good one: Put blinders on and just go forward. Don’t look to your left and don’t look to your right; just concentrate on where you’re going and go the extra mile. I am such a hard worker. I am talking to you right now and have three meetings in the next four hours. Then, I get on a plane to London, have two meetings there, and will be back on Friday to appear on Jimmy Fallon’s show. On Saturday afternoon, I’m taking my grandson to the theater and then performing that night in New Jersey. On Sunday, I have the Celebrity Apprentice finale.

PND: Talk about your reaction to Melissa’s firing.

Rivers: If Melissa had been fired for something she did wrong or a lack of work, then that’s fine. However, she was fired for duplicity, sleaziness, and high school pettiness. Annie found the stupid blonde and knew damn well that she had to get rid of her competition. When we were all girlfriends in the beginning of the show, Annie went down the line saying things like, “Claudia Jordan is lazy” and “Brande Roderick is stupid.” She said that Melissa and I were her biggest competition. Annie is a smart person, but at some point, you have to push yourself away from the poker table.

PND: Heading into the final episode, what will it take for Joan Rivers to win?

Rivers: If winning means money, I don’t win, but that’s what brought this country to its knees. Look at the Bernard Madoffs and the AIGs: If it’s only about money, then I don’t want to win. If it’s about playing a great game, I never stopped and I won a lot. I brought in a lot of money, but that wasn’t all I did.

Just a few years ago everyone believed that gambling is in general recession-proof and no economic downturn could slow down the casinos and gambling halls. Needless to say, the bankruptcy filings and bleak financial reports from the casinos all over the country proved that theory wrong. Of course, the online casinos and other online gambling websites turn out to be just as vulnerable to an economy slow-down as their land-based counterparts. We have always kept our fingers on the pulse of the internet gambling industry and we felt that pulse slow down considerably last year with millions of people losing their jobs world-wide and those lucky enough to have missed the massive layoffs - saving every penny and spending none on recreation in the form of gambling, whether online or offline.

But from our recent conversations with various online casinos and sportsbooks - the recovery, at least in the United States, may be well on its way. The online casinos point to an increase in the number of new gamblers signing up at their properties and while the average amount of money spent gambling online is still well below what we have seen in previous years, it’s slowly improving, as well. The Kentucky Derby was another success story. We, just like any other gambling commentator, were bracing for a disappointing interest in the Kentucky Derby betting this year, especially after the bad numbers the sportsbook saw during the NCAA Tournament. Were we surprised when it turns out the Kentucky Derby this year actually generated much more interest compared to last year, especially when considering this time last year we have just began talking about economy slowdown.

Of course, the improving numbers at the online casinos and sportsbooks could hardly be an indicator for economic recovery you would see coming out of from the experts and Wall Street analysts. But we, who have seen the online gambling industry decline with a pace equal to the U.S. economy, are confident to draw the conclusion that the worst may be indeed over. With people spending again at the online and offline gambling venues, this is a good enough trend to show recovery just as any other.