West Virginia Casino Operator Suing Former Partner

Delaware North is a casino operator in the state of West Virginia, behind the two gaming venues Wheeling Island and the Mardi Gras Casino. The company was one of the first to offer sports betting in land-based and online format in the state. For their online gaming, Delaware North provided the Bet Lucky brand. The company saw their sports operations shut down in early March, all due to a dispute between their technology supplier and a third party vendor.

Delaware North was working with Miomni Gaming to supply the technology for all their sports betting services. Little did they know, Miomni had a partnership with a company called Entergaming that resulted in the eventual shutdown of services at the two casinos owned by Delaware North and their online site. A lawsuit has now been filed due to missed revenues from the shutdown.

Lawsuit Filed

Delaware North first announced they were cutting ties with Miomni and now they have filed a lawsuit against the company. In the suit, the company claims that Miomni Gaming and their CEO participated in fraud after misrepresenting their ownership of a key component of the Bet Lucky platform.

As part of the partnership, Delaware North thought they were receiving a full solution for sports betting. The company says that they had no idea Entergaming was part of the picture, hence the fraudulent accusation. According to the lawsuit, during negotiations for the partnership deal, Miomni stated that they owned the intellectual property rights of the platform.

The property rights, according to Delaware North, included the source code underlying the front end interface as well as the back end of the Bet Lucky platform. According to Delaware North, Miomni revealed that they would not be impacted by a third party contract at all when it came to operating sports betting services for the company, but that was not the case.

Entergaming

So, the shutdown took place after Entergaming entered a dispute with Miomni Gaming. Delaware North was in the dark at first and then surprised to find a third-party involved in their shutdown of sports betting services.

Delaware North has stated that information they were provided by Miomni indicated that Entertgaming was going to sell and transfer the software of BetLucky as well as the source code and other rights of the platform to Miomni. This is what they were told during negotiations.

The CEO of Miomni told representatives of Delaware North that they had acquired all rights from Entergaming. So, Delaware North was certainly surprised when it was revealed that Entergaming was the reason behind the shutdown.

It seems that the deal between Entergaming and Miomni never came to fruition. Entergaming continued to be a third-party vendor. According to the Bet Lucky License Agreement, Miomni was required to gain approval before any third parties were brought in to perform services involving the sports betting platform.

According to the lawsuit, Miomni disclosed entities involved in offering such services but Entergaming was not one of the company’s disclosed. Based on what Delaware North has reported, Entergaming decided to shutdown their services because Miomni did not hold up their end of the bargain. Miomni reportedly never paid Entergaming an Option Fee required for the source code.

Entergaming wants to be paid so they shut down services. For now, it seems that Miomni Gaming is in deep water. They may have made a few decisions that will not bode well in the long run as they face opposition from Entergaming as well as Delaware North.

Jackson
Jackson

Our in-house expert for all things regulation, Jackson covers all major recent developments across US states relating to gambling laws & legislation.