Blueprint Gaming’s latest slot release tasks players to look for the leprechaun’s pot of gold under the water rather than at the end of the rainbow in Plenty O’ Fish, a 6×4 hybrid of sea creatures and shimmering rewards.

Players must look to unlock a tackle box of treasure with a jaunty leprechaun being the key to wins, lurking behind a dynamically coloured underwater background that changes when the bonus game is triggered.

Landing the leprechaun fisherman symbol triggers the Plenty O’ Fish collect feature, where players can reel in cash rewards or one of four exciting jackpots, selecting from major, mega, mini and minor.

Gold coins are also added to the treasure chest when a golden fish appears in view during the base game, with the chest able to close randomly and award a range of modifiers including free spins.

Free spins can also be triggered by landing three or more bonus symbols with instant upgrades awarded by landing gold coins, with any unused upgrades returned when the main game resumes.

Plenty O’ Fish adds further diversity to Blueprint Gaming’s catalogue of games, merging two popular themes to provide more content for all sectors of its growing player base.

“As we look to expand our portfolio, we combined proven themes to align fishing and Irish titles for Plenty O’ Fish; two of the most popular themes the slot sector has ever seen,” the Marketing and Relationships Director for Blueprint Gaming, Jo Purvis, said. “Adding a rich feature set to the crisp animation and catchy soundtrack means we’ve got another fantastic title in our tackle box.

“Players will love the ability to retrigger features, boosting excitement and rewards alongside the free spins to ensure the slot stands apart in a crowded market.”

Pragmatic Play, a leading content supplier to the iGaming industry, has unleashed roaming wild re-spins and random guaranteed wins in Release the Bison.

Symbols of the American frontier abound in this 5×4 slot, where hitting four or more rampaging bison triggers the wild re-spin feature, during which all wilds roam the reels to boost win potential. If another wild lands on the re-spin, an additional re-spin is awarded and the total win multiplier increases by 1x. Any scatters that hit are also collected with at least three needed to trigger free spins.

In the base game, any non-winning spin is capable of randomly transforming into a win of 10x to 40x the total bet. And if three, four or five scatters hit, a wheel of fortune randomly awards up to 18 free spins with a 2x to 5x multiplier. Any wild symbol that lands during the bonus game stays on screen until the end of the round, roaming the reels with each free spin. Wilds are also collected in a meter, with additional free spins and increasing multipliers available from the fifth wild collected.

Release the Bison is the latest addition to Pragmatic Play’s multi-award-winning slots portfolio following recent releases Barnyard Megahays Megaways and Lobster Bob’s Sea Food and Win It.

“Pragmatic Play has delivered another thrilling game feature in Release the Bison with roaming wilds able to transform spins into a stampede of wins,” the Chief Operating Officer for Pragmatic Play, Irina Cornides, said.

Pragmatic Play currently produces up to eight new slot titles a month while also delivering live casino and bingo games as part of its multi-product portfolio, available through a single API.

Football (soccer) and tennis accounted for 68% of cases

The International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA) reported 56 alerts of suspicious betting to the relevant authorities in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024.

The Q1 2024 total is an increase of 65% when compared to 34 alerts in Q4 2023 and an increase of 12% when compared to the revised Q1 2023 total of 50 alerts. All of IBIA’s alerts are identified using customer account data from IBIA members, which number over 50 companies and 125 sports betting brands, making IBIA the largest integrity monitor of its type in the world.

The 56 incidents of suspicious betting in Q1 concerned six sports, across 21 countries and five continents. Other key data for Q1 2024 includes:

• Football (soccer) had the highest number of alerts by sport with 24, representing a 50% increase on the 16 reported in Q4 2023 and a 60% increase on the 15 reported in Q1 2022.
• Turkey had the highest number of country alerts with 8 (five in football, two in tennis and one in basketball).
  41% of all alerts in Q1 were identified on sporting events taking place in Asia, with North and South America joint second with 18% each.
• There were only 4 alerts identified on sporting events in Europe, which represents a decrease of 76% compared to 17 alerts in Q4 2023.

Khalid Ali, IBIA CEO, said: “The first quarter saw an increase in reported alerts highlighting the ongoing challenge our members, sports and regulatory authorities face from corrupt activity, with football and Asia dominating our Q1 report. IBIA’s alerts are supported by detailed global customer account data only available to IBIA and its membership, which continues to grow, widening our world leading market coverage. That account data provides evidentiary information that is vital for advancing investigations and imposing sanctions. IBIA is committed to continuing to work closely with stakeholders and to providing this important evidence base.”

The Q1 report includes a focus on the availability of sports betting in Canada and a comparison between the licensing approach in Ontario and the monopoly approach in the rest of the country. IBIA recently released a report on the Availability of Sports Betting Products which highlighted Ontario as a leading regulated gambling jurisdiction, with an expected onshore channelisation for sports betting of 92% in 2024 forecast to rise to 97% in 2028. Whereas the rest of Canada combined is forecast to have an onshore rate of around 11% in 2024 becoming 13% by 2028.

IBIA currently represents over 60% of the private sports betting operators licensed in Ontario, with Glitnor recently announced as the latest operator to join the association in that province. IBIA is a not-for-profit body that has no competing conflicts with the delivery of commercial services to other sectors and is run by operators for operators to protect regulated sports betting markets from match-fixing. IBIA’s global monitoring network is a highly effective anti-corruption tool, detecting and reporting suspicious activity in regulated betting markets.

Through the IBIA global monitoring network it is possible to track transactional activities linked to individual customer accounts. IBIA members have over $300bn per annum in betting turnover (handle), accounting for approximately 50% of the global commercial regulated land-based and online sports betting sector, and in excess of 50% for online alone.