Pirates Plenty

About Pirates Plenty

One of the operator’s most significant challenges is the increase in gambling tax enforced over recent years. Petra has been particularly vocal about this and the company’s profitability has taken a reasonable hit, since the first tax increase to 34.2% of GGR came into effect on 1 January 2025.

Holland Casino now pays 37.8% of GGR to the state, as per the additional increase in 2026, but with labour tax on top the business pays around 52% before they can look at their base running costs. It is not a small burden by any stretch of the imagination, so it is heartening to see the business doing well despite the tightening tax burden.

With such a significant rise in tax, you would forgive the company for cutting wherever possible, but Petra says they have made it work by maximising efficiency, restructuring, and maintaining their offering so the customer doesn’t notice that anything has changed.

What is Pirates Plenty?

Black Cube, an intelligence firm hired by Playtech in 2020 to look into alleged illegal behaviour at its rival Evolution, released a divisive report into Evolution’s actions. Evolution denied and refuted much of its findings.

Evolution then commissioned Spectrum Gaming Group to produce a report on its actions and the validity of the Black Cube report. Produced in 2022, the report has long been subject to confidentiality despite Evolution claiming the report exonerated the company.

Playtech on Wednesday published a statement highlighting what it claimed were compliance failures at Evolution, written into the Spectrum report.

About Pirates Plenty

The extent of the revisions vary, but most are somewhat significant with regard to language that is being added or omitted. Proposed changes to Standard 9 (digital pari-mutuel systems), for instance, include mostly small additions, whereas Standard 3 (slot metering systems) has entire sections added and subtracted. Explanatory notes for the edits are frequent throughout all of the proposals.

While Nevada is considered the top gaming state in the US, its regulatory framework related to technology has been seen as slow-moving and cluttered in comparison to other up-and-coming jurisdictions around the US. Ever since NGCB Chair Mike Dreitzer took over last June, modernisation has been a top priority, and these latest revisions are an extension of that.

“We finally got to a point where we said, you know what, let’s drop all our other efforts right now and get these over the finish line and get them up for comment so that we can make sure that we’re current with things,” Jeremy Eberwein, chief of the board’s Technology Division, told iGB.