Month: April 2021

BOS’s statement formed part of its response to a consultation on the document that was released in August 2020. The document took two years to publish and dealt with a wide range of issues across Swedish society, including gambling.

Among the proposed changes in the report was a call for the state, through regulator Spelinspektionen, to play a much more hands-on role as a “gatekeeper” rather than generally overseeing the market.

In Jämlikhets­kommissionen’s proposal, all licensed operators’ products would only be available through a single state portal, which it likened to Sweden’s alcohol shop monopoly.

Under this system, Jämlikhets­kommissionenn also called for a limit on the amount players could spend across all operators in a 24-hour period and suggested that gambling could be limited to certain times. It did not provide an amount for this limit to be set at or suggest specific times to limit gambling, however. Currently, Swedish players are limited to deposits of SEK5000 (£422/€489/$581) per month for online casino games, but other verticals are not limited.

The report also said changes were needed in advertising. 

Currently, gambling advertisements in Sweden cannot be restricted as ads covered by press freedom laws. However, the Equality Commission called for a constitutional amendment to change this, similar to amendments that already exist for tobacco and alcohol.

It then called for mandatory warnings on gambling ads, such as “Most who gamble lose money,” “Gambling addiction increases the risk of suicide,”or “Children of gambling-dependent parents are at risk of getting off to a bad start to life”.

In January of this year, more than 300 bodies including BOS were invited to respond to the consultation by 12 April, with BOS submitting its response yesterday (7 April). 

The operator association was strongly opposed to Jämlikhets­kommissionen’s suggestions of a single state portal and a constitutional amendment to allow restrictions on gambling advertisements.

It said the proposals suggested insufficient research on the sector, and that a more informed body would not have made these proposals.

“BOS rejects these proposals and hopes that future public investigations will focus more on the knowledge-gathering phase in an investigative work in the future, so that greater clarity can be brought regarding how gaming on the internet works and what consequences different interventions have,” it said. “It is our belief that state internet portals will then not be relevant to propose again, nor restrictions on the constitutional freedom of expression.”

The trade body also pointed to the fact that the Swedish government did not ask Jämlikhets­kommissionen to investigate gambling policy, and said that the Commission did not consult industry experts for its report.

In addition, BOS pointed to the issue of channelisation in the Swedish market – where BOS chair Gustaf Hoffstedt recently claimed vindication after channelisation as found to have decreased in 2020 – and said Jämlikhets­kommissionen did not show any regard for protection of the licensed market.

“The balancing act for gaming policy is to achieve as high a level of consumer protection as possible without the leakage to the unregulated gaming market becoming unacceptably high,” it said. “It is not an easy task.

“This difficult balancing act is not something that seems to worry the Equality Commission. It now appears that the Equality Commission is coming up with proposals that go much further in a tightening direction than the state’s gambling policy inquiries.”

Board appointees include Katerina Belorusskaya – who has been with the company since 2011 – as a stakeholder, and Marek Šmrha as a non-executive board consultant. Sergey Portnov will step down as CEO and serve as chairman of the board.

Maksym Liashko and Roman Syrotian have been appointed as co-CEOs in addition to roles on the supervisory board. The two will divide operating responsibilities in the position, where Liashko will take on finance, legal and communication roles while Syrotian will focus on IT, product and marketing.

“For Roman and me, a dual CEO structure is a logical move and consolidation of the company’s growth directions,” said Liashko.

“We know our areas well, and we will do everything to implement the company’s plans to enter the next level of development.”

“Being already in excellent shape today, Parimatch has ambitions of achieving top positions on the markets all over the world,” added Syrotian.

“I hope to contribute to this goal by ensuring that we provide our customers with the highest quality entertainment and services.”

This month Parimatch announced a promotional partnership with Ukrainian AI app Reface with the Parimatch x Reface social media challenge.

In March Parimatch received Ukraine’s first ever sports betting license after Ukraine’s gambling act came into law in August 2020.

Introduced in the state’s Senate by Senators Jim Perry and Paul Lowe, Senate Bill 688 would expand the North Carolina sports wagering market to allow online and mobile betting. Sports betting is currently only permitted via tribal operators.

SB 688 would allow the North Carolina State Lottery Commission to issue at least 10 interactive sports betting licenses to operators, but no more than 12 permits would be made available.

These licenses would enable operators to accept online bets on both professional and collegiate sports, as well as esports and amateur sports, such as the Olympic Games.

Licenses would cost $500,000, though this would be refunded in the event that an operator’s application is turned down. Permits would run for five years, after which operator would need to pay $100,000 to renew for a further five years.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

Alternative Investment Market (AIM)-listed investor Pires in December subscribed for 6,667 ordinary shares in Low6 at an overall consideration of £200,010 (€231,783/$275,340).

Low6 in February then set out plans to commence an initial public offering (IPO) in the second quarter of this year, following the fundraising drive with Pires.

The provider extended its pre-IPO funding round to allow for a “well-respected figure” in the gaming industry to invest in the business and also join its advisory board after the IPO.

Pires invested a further £35,000 during the extended round, taking its overall investment in the provider to £235,010 in. Low6 raised a total of £3.3m in convertible notes during the pre-IPO round.

Other recent developments at Low6 include the soft launch of its PubWars apps on 1 April, attracted approximately £2,000 in wagers in the first seven days of activity, while the Uber Eats Weekly 7 game has also gone live.

Pires said that as Low6 now has over 122,000 users, the provider is looking to bring in a new CTO to scale the business and execute its three-year technology roadmap.

“We are pleased to note that Low6 has continued to make rapid progress since our most recent investment in February, as part of the extension of Low6’s pre-IPO funding round.” Pires chairman Peter Redmond said.

“Recently, Low6 has launched the Uber Eats Weekly 7 game and PubWars app, as well as signing a number of new partners within the sports industry, with discussions currently underway with potential US partners.

“With its IPO still on track for Q2 2021, we look forward to updating the market on Low6’s progress in due course.”

Shore will lead GAN’s investor relations and capital markets efforts, including strategic engagement with the investor community and analysts around the gaming technology provider’s positioning in the digital gaming space.

Shore joins GAN from Scientific Games, where he had served as senior director of investor relations and corporate finance, a role in which he was involved with the initial public offering of the SciPlay subsidiary.

Prior to this, Shore spent more than a decade in equity research at Wells Fargo, Union Gaming and Susquehanna International Group, where he covered gaming technology companies and operators

“There is clear excitement and momentum in digital gaming, and I am eager to further contribute to GAN’s leadership position and operational excellence in this segment,” Shore said.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

The renewed agreement – which extends a deal signed in August 2020 – will run for three years, with Sportsbet.io to remain as the team’s main front-of-shirt sponsor.

The deal represents the biggest sponsorship agreement in the club’s history and also includes the option for the club to be paid certain performance-based bonuses in Bitcoin at the end of each season.

Aside from the shirt sponsorship aspect of the agreement, Sportsbet.io will also continue to work with the club on local community initiatives and responsible gambling campaigns.

“In a short timeframe, Sportsbet.io has proven to be innovative, forward thinking and extremely supportive of the club, our fans and the wider community, and we’ve welcomed the opportunity to develop and promote safe gambling messages together,” Southampton’s chief commercial officer David Thomas said.

“As such they have become valued partners and we look forward to the next chapter together.”

Coingaming Group chief executive Maarja Pärt added: “Our first season as Southampton’s main club partner has already exceeded all expectations. We’ve been inspired by the passion of the club and its fans, and it was an easy decision for us to extend our partnership with the Saints for another three years.”

“From the beginning, Southampton have been a perfect match for the fun, fast and fair way we do things at Sportsbet.io. We can’t wait to continue this journey with the Saints, and we’ll be doing everything we can to support the team and its community into the future.”

Though Golden Matrix did not disclose the identity of its first client for the new platform, it said that the customer is an “established” operator.

Golden Matrix chief executive Brian Goodman also said the launch coincides with the start of the new Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket season.

“This is a significant opportunity for the company, enabling us to enter one of the world’s largest markets with a new and compelling sportsbook product,” Goodman said.

“Cricket is not only part of Indian culture that has one of the world’s largest populations, currently 1.3 billion people, but also has 2-3 billion fans across India, UK, Pakistan, Asia, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, West Indies, Australia, New Zealand and Africa.”

Golden Matrix added that it expects to integrate and launch the system with a number of additional clients in new markets over the next six weeks, with the aim of securing approval in certain US states later this year.

The launch comes after Golden Matrix entered a software license and services agreement with sports betting platforms provider Amelco in late 2020. The deal covers the marketing and distribution of Amelco’s turnkey solution to operators in regulated markets worldwide.

“Since we began our collaboration and distribution agreement with Amelco, we have seen significant interest from both current and prospective clients in adopting this dynamic sportsbook engine with associated managed trading services,” Goodman said

“Fully integrated into our GM-X industry-leading B2B technology platform, this new sportsbook offering can now be deployed via numerous gaming operators globally.”

The launch comes after Golden Matrix last month filed with the SEC to raise up to $10m in an initial public offering on Nasdaq.

In November, the supplier also announced a collaboration agreement with Playtech, to expand both companies’ share of global esports and betting markets.

The year included around six weeks of lockdowns that saw all bingo halls shut in Tombola’s key markets of the UK and mainland Europe.

Gambling advisory business Regulus Partners estimates that around 60%, or £72.0m, of this total, came from the UK.

Tombola’s costs of sales came to £85.3m, up 19.7%, leaving gross profit of £34.7m, up 4.3%.

The operator then paid administrative expenses of £22.7m, up 10.8%. Much of this spending was on staff, as wages and salary costs were up 13.3% to £15.3m, while overall staff costs grew 12.8% to £17.6m.

This left £12.0m in operating profit, a 6.7% decline.

The business paid interest income, which dropped 87.2% to £50,000, and interest expenses of £33,000.

It paid a further £2.7m in tax, up 35.1%. Tombola’s total tax bill was £3.0m – of which £1.5m was from UK corporation tax, £1.1m adjustments and £468,000 overseas corporation tax – but £330,000 of this was deferred.

After these costs, Tombola’s profit came to £9.4m. This was down 16.6% from 2018-19.

Regulus noted that given Tombola’s strict player protection requirements, including a £500 weekly deposit cap, may offer a glimpse into a possible future for gambling in the UK given proposed regulatory changes. 

“While this model works extremely well for Tombola and it helps to ensure a safer gambling environment ‘by product’, it also speaks to the fact that the vast majority of addressable customer revenue, even in a ‘softer’ product range such as bingo, is driven by less restricted products,” it said. “Tombola’s business model is therefore something of a litmus test for tough product restrictions in the UK and elsewhere: it might capture a lot of customers, but it does not capture much revenue.”

Sportradar will be responsible for providing bet monitoring to the organisation and reporting on football, basketball and darts events played in the country, which the supplier said could involve over 1,500 matches this year.

Alongside its bet monitoring services, Sportradar will provide the NOC*NSF with information about the established global betting markets on domestic Dutch sport.

Risk analysis will also be provided throughout the partnership, in order to inform the organisation’s strategic decisions to protect sport from integrity risks.

Sportradar said the agreement is the first of its kind to work under the so-called Macolin Convention, or the Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions, a multilateral treaty effective from September 2019, which aims to prevent, detect and punish match-fixing in sport.

“In order to work in line with the Macolin Convention, this pilot agreement with Sportradar Integrity Services is an essential project in understanding the betting exposure that is afforded to Dutch sport,” said Gerard Dielessen, chief executive of the NOC*NSF.

“Through ongoing bet monitoring of our domestic sports competitions, and analysis of the latest betting trends surrounding them we will have insights that will help inform what the most effective and efficient long-term strategy is to protect against integrity risks.”

Managing director of Sportradar Integrity Services, Andreas Krannich, added: “By signing this agreement, the NOC*NSF have shown their crucial proactivity in protecting sports competitions in the Netherlands from integrity risks such as match manipulation.”

“This is the first project of its type within the structure of the Council of Europe’s Macolin Convention, and it should be viewed by other nations as a blueprint of what bet monitoring looks like at a national, multi-sport level.”

In February, Sportradar revealed plans for a new Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS), to be offered free of charge to all sports federations and leagues later this year.

The supplier said the system, which was developed by Sportradar Integrity Services and has been backed by the International Olympic Committee, was created in consultation with its existing fraud detection partners, and will help strengthen the integrity of global sport.

The case dates back to April 2019, when ANJ’s predecessor for regulating the online market, L’Autorité de régulation des jeux en ligne (ARJEL) took action against a number of operators.

These licensees were found to have breached France’s Consumer Code, by offering unfair terms and conditions to players. ARJEL warned that these companies could face legal action as a result.

However, AFJEL disputed this, arguing that the Consumer Code did not apply to gambling. AFJEL also sought to secure €4,000 in damages from ARJEL.

A decision on the matter was made almost two years later by the French Council of State, by which point ANJ had taken over as France’s unified gambling regulator.

The Council ruled that operators may be considered as “professionals”, and players as “consumers”, meaning online gambling may be considered a consumer service, as covered by the Consumer Code.

It said that AFJEL’s challenge was therefore unjustified. As a result, the ANJ has the power to take legal action against licensees which continue to include unfair terms and conditions for players.

“ANJ, which makes the protection of players a central axis of its work, welcomes this decision of the Council of State which will allow it in particular to initiate action in the event that it observes violations of consumer law that undermine the protection the state grants to the player in his capacity as consumer,” the regulator said.

Since its creation, the ANJ has put a particular focus on responsible marketing. In its first annual marketing review, it said it had “serious concerns” about the marketing strategies of lottery operator La Française des Jeux (FDJ) and racing monopoly Pari-Mutuel Urbain (PMU).

In 2020, online gambling revenue in France came to €1.74bn, as the market recovered strongly from the disruption of the opening six months of the year in H2