Month: September 2021

Sattar will oversee internal operations including product and compliance, with Pappano to continue to lead Sightline’s strategy, sales, client success and marketing organisations.

Sattar co-founded Sightline in 2011 and served as its executive vice president ever since, playing a key role in securing partnerships with clients such as Resorts World Las Vegas and Boyd Gaming.

Prior to founding Sightline, Sattar was senior vice president of cash access services at Global Cash Access, which is now Everi Holdings.

“The past year has been transformative for Sightline, and we have no intention of slowing down our progress to revolutionise payments in the gaming and hospitality industries,” Sattar said.

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The loss limit for the games was previously set at NOK7,500 after the operator in December last year cut the maximum amount players could lose on its KongKasino, eFlax, Bingoria and Yezz sites by 25% from NOK10,000.

The reduction was initially seen as a temporary measure to run during December and January, in response to an increase in income from high-risk players. However, the NOK7,500 limit remained in place for players throughout 2021.

The new limit means players can now only lose half the amount when playing online high-risk games with Norsk Tipping than at the same time last year.

Norsk Tipping added that the new NOK5,000 limit, which will apply to all customers until further notice, will reduce overall player losses by between NOK150m and NOK175m each year. 

“We have seen a clear effect after we adjusted the limit in December, in that the proportion of high-risk players has fallen over a longer period of time,” Norsk Tipping’s head of responsible gaming, Bjørn Helge Hoffmann explained.

“Nevertheless, we see that there is still a group of core players who lose a lot. Therefore, we want to see if a lower limit can affect these in a positive direction.

“We think that this change will initially apply throughout the year. A major review and evaluation of the entire Norsk Tipping loss limit regime is now underway. When this work is completed, we will present an updated, permanent set of rules for the entire business.”

The loss limit was one of a number of measures put in place by Norsk Tipping last December to help cut losses among high-risk players, with other initiatives including a mandatory 15-minute break after one of continuous play. These measures will also remain in place for the foreseeable future. 

Yasri was found in breach of section D.1.a. of the Tennis Anti-Corruption Program (TACP) rules, which states no covered person shall wager on the outcome or any other aspect of tennis event or competition.

The ITIA did not disclose how many bets Yasri placed, or which matches he wagered on, but it did confirm that Yasri did not play in any of the matches in question, nor he did not have any inside information on these events.

Yasri, who has a highest ATP ranking of 1,864, is prohibited from playing in, coaching at or attending tennis events authorised or sanctioned by the governing bodies of tennis until 27 October, with the ban having been backdated to 28 July this year.

The charge also included a $5,000 (£3,624/€4,219), but this will be suspended on condition of no further breaches.

Yasri was given the chance to appeal the decision to an independent anti-corruption hearing officer but opted against this course of action.

Last month, the ITIA handed a provisional suspension to Peruvian tennis player Mauricio Echazu Puente, pending the results of an anti-corruption investigation, while Moroccan player Simohamed Hirs was banned for life in July following investigations into multiple incidents of match fixing

Total market revenue – players’ wagers minus winnings paid out – for the three months to 30 June was SEK6.51bn (£548.2m/€637.8m/$755.5m). This was up from SEK5.91bn in the second quarter of last year and also 4.8% higher than SEK6.25bn in the first quarter of 2021.

Online gambling remained by far the primary source of gambling revenue during Q2, with revenue from online casino games and sports betting increasing 13.9% year-on-year to SEK4.11bn.

Revenue from the state lottery and land-based slot machines also climbed by 9.3% to SEK1.41bn, while revenue from charitable lotteries edged up from SEK937m to SEK939m.

Charity bingo games revenue increased 15.8% to SEK44m, though revenue from the land-based commercial games segment, including restaurant casinos, declined 85.3% year-on-year to SEK5m.

Figures published by Swedish regulator Spelinspektionen also revealed that no revenue was generated by state-owned land-based casino Casino Cosmopol for fifth consecutive quarter as facilities remained closed due to novel coronavirus (Covid-19) restrictions. 

Casino Cosmopol began to reopen its sites from early July as Covid-19 measures were eased in Sweden.

Spelinspektionen also revealed that 100 companies had active licences in Sweden in June, while at the end of the quarter, almost 64,000 players had opted into the Spelpaus self-exclusion program.

Greentube’s social casino business comprises B2C apps in Europe and the US, alongside a B2B solution available in the US and Australia. In North America in particular, which will account for an estimated 71% of social casino GGR in 2021 according to H2 Gambling Capital, free-to-play is enjoying something of a return to prominence. 

The big names of social casino’s 2012 boom, Playtika and DoubleDown Interactive, are either listed or listing on US exchanges. Free-to-play sports, thanks to the likes of SportCaller and SuperDraft, have finally helped establish that vertical. 

“As the social casino vertical is growing on a global scale, we are now increasing our efforts to particularly grow our apps portfolio in the US,” chief executive Thomas Graf explains. 

This will see Greentube add a new app, Diamond Cash, to its portfolio alongside GameTwist and Slotpark, while free-to-play variants of its slot titles will be made available to some of the biggest US Casino Groups via GAN’s Simulated Gaming solution. 

This social push is to be supported by cryptocurrency. 

“We have just last year started to integrate cryptos into one of our most prominent social casino apps to see how players embrace this new payment method,” Graf explains. “For us, this was a very good opportunity to test the crypto space and we had a few important learnings.”

Whether this eventually sees it offer cryptocurrency payments for real-money gaming remains to be seen, however. Graf says this testing is “at the very early stages”, and it will be focused on social before any real-money implementation is even considered and will be subject to the strictest compliance standards. 

Cryptocurrency is also a key component of Greentube’s esports push, for which it acquired the Austria-based Hero in February this year. It operates Herosphere.gg, a blockchain-powered platform that allows players to create their own contests and bet on the outcomes. 

The platform, which has a user base of over 300,000 players, has a proprietary token, Herocoin, as its primary form of currency. While a second blockchain-based acquisition in the space of the year suggests a particular interest in crypto, Graf says the Hero deal was driven “first and foremost” by its interest in esports and esports betting.

“Hero gives us a head start as they have already developed and prototyped a tournament system for e-sports which we are going to use and adapt for our core Greentube business as well,” he explains. 

“What we have found especially interesting with the Herosphere platform was their more gamified approach to the topic,” he adds. “Currently we are adapting and improving the platform to be able to relaunch it in an even more competitive version.”

This will again be used for to provide a better understanding of esports, for a proprietary solution that factors in the business’ experience in pure-play skill-based gaming, of which the Herosphere will play “an integral part”, he says. 

“Similar to the casino space, we are not only looking into creating our own platform but we want to create our own content as well which will give us an edge over competition.”

Post Content

XLMedia agreed to pay $11.0m up front and the remaining $12.0m over three years, while the founders of Saturday Football will also receive $1.0m in long-term incentive shares of XLMedia.

Saturday Football founders Josh Gates, Kevin Duffey and Jonathan Cooper will be retained in the business and each given shares worth $333,333.33 each. The share awards will become fully vested on the fourth anniversary of the date of the grant.

The acquisition, XLMedia said, will allow it to access the US college football marketplace to complement its existing US sports betting vertical, supporting its strategy of increasing its presence high growth regulated markets.

XLMedia also said it would leverage Saturday Football’s key brand sponsorships and benefit from established social media, video and content production, and programmatic AdTech capabilities, creating cross marketing opportunities for the wider group.

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Adjusted gross revenue for July amounted to $12.7m (£9.2m/€10.7m), down from $14.9m in June and the smallest amount since $11.8m was generated in April.

Handle for the month reached $161.9m, which was 31.1% down from $234.9m and also the lowest amount since $58.9m was wagered in the first month of legal sports wagering in January this year.

Consumers won $141.9m from sports wagering during the month, while the state was able to generate $1.8m in taxes betting.

Virginia has a 15% tax on sports betting activity based on each license-holder’s adjusted gross revenue, which is defined as total bets minus winnings and other authorized deductions.

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The approval has been published in the Federal Register, meaning it is officially part of Washington State law.

The publication comes just before the National Football League (NFL) and college football seasons are set to begin.

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DraftKings has announced the launch of its online sportsbook in Wyoming, which becomes the 13th state to offer the product. The operator has also rolled out its online sportsbook in Virginia and Michigan in January.

DraftKings co-founder and president Matt Kalish said: “Legalised sports betting has seen widespread growth in just three years and the DraftKings Sportsbook has been at the center of the action.

“We are thrilled that Wyoming sports bettors have the opportunity to experience the highly accessible and immersive fan experience along with best in class consumer protections that our product offers millions of skin-in-the-game sports fans.”

Furthermore, Genius Sports announced it was granted an online sports wagering vendor permit by the Wyoming Gaming Commission. Wyoming becomes the 15th state which Genius now has access to.

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