Winter Champions

What is Winter Champions?

It finds that online gaming shows more documented terrorist financing activity than gambling, although proliferation financing risks remain limited across both sectors.

Cash, e-wallets, mobile money and virtual assets emerge as the payment methods most vulnerable to abuse. This is particularly true where operators use them to structure deposits below reporting thresholds. 

Giles Thomson, FATF president, said unregulated sectors risk becoming “attractive gateways for fraudsters, professional money launderers and organised criminal networks”. He called on governments to strengthen oversight, crack down on illegal and offshore operators and deepen public-private cooperation. 

About Winter Champions

Coming from the outside, I needed to gather a team to help steer the ship. In the two years since I took on the role, I have been blessed to work with some of the sharpest minds in the industry and I couldn’t be prouder of what we have achieved so far.

I won’t lie, when I first entered iGaming, I had my concerns. Aspects of the industry felt stuck in a state of stasis. People were making money, and as long as that continued to happen and margins were healthy, why innovate? Just keep doing the same things over and over, with marginal improvements when necessary.

As someone with a naturally curious mind, I found this frustrating. However, in a short period of time, I have seen positive changes. Recent regulatory shifts and an increasingly competitive landscape are pushing companies to innovate, and those unwilling to adapt are being left behind.

What is Winter Champions?

Station and Culinary have been at odds for many years, and this has included everything from back-and-forth barbs in the media to complaints before Nevada regulators and ultimately a number of court challenges. The December 2019 Red Rock election has proved to be perhaps the most significant development in their relationship thus far.

Station’s corporate leadership had approved and announced a new benefits overhaul for all of its 14,000 employees across ten properties on 19 November 2019. Two days later, Culinary, which represents workers at seven other Station properties besides Red Rock, petitioned to represent workers at that casino.

Red Rock employees rejected unionisation the following month by a 627-534 vote, although the NLRB and the DC appeals court have held that the company took steps to prevent a fair and honest election. The timing of the benefits rollout and unionisation petition have been a central issue in the matter in the years since.