The official blog of Stathis Kassios for Business, Media, Economics & Arts

That is the current case in recent Casino Industry news in Greece. Illegal gambling, physical (traditionally widespread) and digital is increasingly absorbing a significant financial amount of the official Casino business revenues. Perhaps this reminds you of digital piracy in music biz. In numbers, I found a worryingly falling revenue percentage which immediately created job losses in various Casinos around Greece. Job lay - offs, the well known recipe for cost - cutting effects, happens when a sector is getting depressed by external factors like the Greek recession, technological upheaval, unfair competition in the form of black markets. Not only that but if the Greek government passes a new legislation for foreign companies pushing for online gambling games, the already troubled Casino Industry will have to face another economic burden. In total, the "virus" consists of about 250 online betting ''places'', 20.000 AWAPs (electronic machines for entertainmen...

Two things that currently swirl around my mind. The Grateful Dead & especially their ultra psychedelic album "Blues for Allah" (1975). The title brings me war images of NATO warships circling Libya. Just replace - relocate the wor(l)ds & see what happens when West & East collide. Back in the 2011 reality, read some hot news about iPhone applications that let artists record personal messages for their fans which can be played back using social networks like Facebook, Myspace, etc. The application's "follow" features will help music bands to identify some kind of loyalty index in order to distinguish loyal fans that pay to buy albums, attend gigs, thus recognize fans that generate revenues rather than sole free riders. " On older social media platforms, the artist doesn’t know if you friended once on Facebook and then walked away, or if you’ve been to every show and know the producer on every album ". For more info: http://www.nyt...

Good to be back after a short "blog break"! By using the title "The downward spiral" I am not directly referring to Nine Inch Nails monumental album back in 1994, but I find this album's concept - based on a suicidal man descending to destruction - highly correlated with the theory about a media firm's inherent risk. As has been said before, companies producing media content like books, music, audio & multimedia recordings in general, face a great amount of uncertainty as regard to the demand their products or services will spur. Their investment faces great risk & uncertainty too. When a manager decides on a firm's available budget plan, he should also consider other alternative business plans which could return significant revenues. He should also estimate a possible outcome, as regard to the expectations of the company's capital investors. Managers should flow with the changing pace of technologies which affect the use of communicatio...