In the race to acquire Paramount, Skydance Media still has the inside track. But there may be more players pulling up in the rearview. According to The New York Times, an investment firm, Apollo Global Management, is in talks with Sony Pictures for a joint bid to take over Paramount, the storied studio behind Mission: Impossible and several other film and TV franchises.

Officially, neither Sony nor Apollo are currently in negotiations with Paramount itself, which is only talking with Skydance. However, the potential deal with Skydance has not been well-received by many of Paramount’s investors. Via Bloomberg, Paramount investor William Riley has formally notified Paramount chairwoman Shari Redstone about his belief that the Spyglass deal is solely for her “personal gains.” Because Redstone has a controlling interest in Paramount’s stock, she is currently pushing for a sale to Spyglass without asking the rest of the shareholders to vote on it.

During an earlier stage …

According to the latest survey conducted for the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC), 79 percent of British bettors think that wagering restrictions would make customers turn to black market gambling sites. The study shows that the limitation of amounts to be wagered with licensed operators “would result in people moving to unregulated websites” offering unlimited bets.

Private financial documents:

The poll also showed that 70 percent of British bettors would rather place their bets with bookmakers that do not request them to provide “private financial documents” to be allowed to wager. The BGC had the study conducted ahead of a huge Cheltenham racing event to access the impact of the black market on the local economy and provide the respective insight for the Government before the publication of a Gambling White Paper setting out new reforms to wagering and gaming operations.

Affordability checks drive bettors away:

The study thus revealed that around 2…

In the American state of California and parties advocating for and against a pair of local ballot initiatives that are looking to formally legalize retail and online sportsbetting have reportedly heretofore spent an aggregate of over $400 million.

According to a report from the Associated Press news service, this figure represents the most ever spent on a ballot initiative in the United States and could eventually grow to top $600 million as the decisive November 8 voting date draws ever nearer. The source detailed that this tally is also almost double the nearly $225 million previous record that was expended in the same state only two years ago as part of a successful campaign to obtain special employment rules for gig-based companies.

Potential progression:

California is home to over 39 million people but has reportedly been slow to take advantage of the sportsbetting revolution sweeping the United States following the 2018 revocation of the p…

According to Mark Cuban, one of the most prominent Shark Tank personalities and a billionaire, the arrival of integrated casino resorts in Texas would have a significant impact on the state’s tourism profile and significantly boost the state’s economic profile.

Making Texas a Tourism-Worthy Destination

Many companies have already shown interest in bringing their operations to bear in the state, including Las Vegas Sands, which has been lobbying to convince legislators of the validity of why bringing a casino resort would make a lot of sense.

Cuban, though, sees in the arrival of potential casino resorts the opportunity to transform the leisure travel and hospitality industries in the state, and give them a significant boost. Cuban spoke to The Dallas Morning News, a prominent media outlet, and spoke about what he saw as…

Watch On

The Finals, that FPS we all tried last fall because of its excellent destruction, hasn’t caught on in 2024 the way Nexon hoped it would. The hundreds of thousands of daily Steam players who showed up in its first month have largely moved on, with its player count peaking around 10,000 Steam players these days.

All games go through periods of lower activity as players have their fill and pick up other games, but The Finals’ player dip in Season 2 (which launched in March) was precipitous enough that its decline was a big topic of Nexon’s recent financial report.

Developer Embark Studios will surely coax some players back with The Finals season 3, unveiled today during the Summer Game Fest show. On top of new weapons and abilities for all three player classes, season 3 will shift The Finals’ ranked mode away from 3v3v3 Cash Out, instead refocusing on 5v5 objective mode Terminal Attack.

Embark’s best weapon to win players back may be flexibility. Season 3’s n…

There’s a chance that, even if you’ve never used the program, you recognize the iconic Bucolic Green Hills of the Windows XP background image. Twenty years ago today, the world got its hands on both the Bliss wallpaper and the classic Windows operating system for the very first time.

As pointed out by @DayTechHistory on X, Windows XP launched officially on October 25, 2001. XP follows up Windows 2000, which is almost equally iconic. Widely praised for its performance and stability, Windows XP is known for having chunky icons, and an incredibly popular, violin-driven startup sound. That wallpaper is among the very best Windows has ever had (find out where in our ranked list of them all).

It’s a very simplistic OS, that doesn’t try to immediately sell you on One Drive and Xbox Game Pass, like Windows 11.

The final update for this legendary OS was in May, 2019, where it received one last security update. According to the latest Steam Hardware Survey, only 0.10% of S…

Last year, Guild Wars 2 killed off the last of the Elder Dragons—the main threat that’s been facing Tyria ever since the game’s launch back in 2012. So what’s next? Today, we get our first hint with a new map and story chapter released in the What Lies Beneath update. Recently, I got the chance to play through the update, its story and a portion of its new map-wide meta event.

Picking up from the conclusion to End of Dragons, the player is called to join Rama and Gorrik and their newly registered Friends’ Detective Agency. Their first job? Investigating a mine run by Jade Brotherhood leader Chul-Moo. This leads players to Gyala Delve, a region of the Jade Sea, to follow-up on reports of missing miners and strange phenomena. Naturally, this leads to a tease of a new threat that players must face in the future.

Found to the east of Dragon’s End, the new map actually takes you under the jade, letting you wander around on the sea bed. It’s here that players discover th…