Month: September 2021

FC Porto becomes the sixth Portuguese club to be sponsored by the Kaizen Gaming-owned brand since its launch in Portugal in 2019. Sporting Lisbon, SL Benfica, SC Braga, Marítimo and Os Belenenses have all signed similar sponsorship deals with the company.

Kaizen Gaming’s chief marketing officer Panos Konstantopoulos said: “We are very excited to be able to announce our partnership with FC Porto, one of the most historic clubs in Europe, with numerous trophies at national and European level.

“We are looking forward to starting to work with this great club and, as we do with all our partners, we are planning a series of social initiatives. This sponsorship agreement marks, once again, the importance of the Portuguese market for Kaizen Gaming.”

Via both the Betano and Stoiximan brands, Kaizen Gaming also sponsors Fluminense and Atlético Mineiro in Brazil, Olympiacos and PAOK Salónica in Greece, FCSB and Univ. Craiova in Romania and Apoel, Omonia, Apollon Limassol and Pafos FC in Cyprus.

Porto’s director of commercial Rui Lousa added: “For us this is an extremely important agreement, as we are always looking to partner with strong partners, especially in an area as important as this. It was an easy understanding, because there was a great desire on the part of both parties to close this agreement.

“We are very pleased to have Betano as Betting Sponsor and our wish is that this will be a good partnership for everyone.”

The annual professional basketball competition, which features leading teams from Bulgaria, Israel, Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia, will continue to be known as the Delasport Balkan League after an agreement was first signed between the two parties last year.

Delasport, the Gibraltar-headquartered sports and casino solutions provider, said the renewed sponsorship is set to continue its support to the BIBL international major league and expand its reach further to a newly established minor basketball league.

Oren Cohen Shwartz, Delasport’s chief executive, said: “The sponsorship of the Balkan League is a natural step for us as sports is embedded in our DNA, and we are passionate about it. At Delasport, we embrace sport values like professionalism, excellence, and dedication. We love sport and it is great to collaborate with the Balkan League. We wish all the teams a great season.”

Delasport, which was founded in 2010, has offices in Gibraltar, Malta, Ukraine and Bulgaria. It recently expanded into Romania after securing a class two licence in the country.

The 14th season of the Delasport Balkan League, which was founded in 2008, will run from October until May 2022.

Shay Shtriks, BIBL’s sports director, said: “We are delighted to be working with Delasport, such a high-profile sponsor. We can expand and establish a minor league and spread the love of sport further by working together. We are all striving for professionalism, and this sponsorship takes things to a new level.”

Novomatic’s online division Greentube will enter the US market, through a new partnership with Golden Nugget Online Gaming (GNOG) in New Jersey.

The supplier said the supply deal is the first of many that will see it expand across the US with more operators and into more states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Michael Bauer, chief financial officer and chief growth officer at Greentube (pictured below), said the US would prove to be a key market for Greentube.

“The US offers unparalleled potential and is a key territory for us going forward as regulation continues to make headway across different states,” Bauer said. “Finally making our debut in New Jersey is a huge achievement for us and we are thrilled to partner with such a renowned operator as Golden Nugget and to introduce our content to their customers. 

Read the full story on iGB North America

The Malta-headquartered content provider can continue delivering its slots and live casino titles to the Greek market under the new regulations. Pragmatic Play is already partnered with leading Greek technology supplier Kaizen Gaming and operator Novibet.

The group said obtaining the licence strengthens its mission of bringing its products, such as live casino, bingo games and slots, to regulated jurisdictions.

Sheriff Khamoura, Pragmatic Play’s director of compliance, said: “We are thrilled to take a crucial step into the Greek market by being granted this A1 Licence. This is a great opportunity for us to continue delivering our expanding product offering to Greek operators.”

Reforms to the Greece’s gambling regulations were passed by its parliament in October 2019, before being submitted to the European Commission in January 2020. The licensing process subsequently began in October 2020.

The supplier joins other such as Playson and Play’n Go in receiving its supplier licence, allowing it to join the market where operators such as Bet365 and Betsson have also been licensed this year.

The CityCasts audio and video podcasts will air on weekdays across multiple platforms with the aim of helping bettors make more informed decisions by providing them with news, analysis and insight.

CityCasts are currently live in Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, while it is expected to launch in New York, Denver, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles in the coming weeks.

RSI CEO Richard Schwartz, who was recently appointed in August, said: “These CityCasts are locally focused, which is consistent with our strategy to offer our players Hometown Sportsbooks, and offer authentic and credible breakdowns specific to each host’s home market.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

Previously, Elmore worked at regulatory laboratory GLI for 14 years, most recently in the position of global sales and development manager. In this role he focused on sales to land-based casino groups and local tribes, as well as testing.

In his new role, Elmore will contribute to and deliver GiG’s commercial strategy across North America.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

The change comes as part of a major cabinet reshuffle that saw a number of ministers change roles. Dowden was appointed chairman of the governing Conservative Party, and will also remain in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio.

Dorries has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Bedfordshire since 2005. Prior to the new role at DCMS, she had been Minister of State for Mental Health, Suicide Prevention and Patient Safety, a role she had held since 2019.

Dorries will head up DCMS while it continues its review of the 2005 Gambling Act. The review began last year with a call for evidence covering a number of topics such as marketing, limits and the Gambling Commission. A white paper examining next steps is set to be published later this year.

While Dorries will lead the department, DCMS Minister for Media and Data John Whittingdale will continue to oversee the British lottery and gambling industry, having taken on that role in March this year.

Whittingdale had been seen as relatively supportive of the industry, having chaired the Parliamentary Select Committee on Culture when it produced a report calling for further expansion of fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs).

The sense of frustration within the European gaming sector about not being able to resume travel to the US for G2E is palpable. Messages have popped up on LinkedIn feeds asking whether anyone knows anything about the chances that Europeans will be able to fly to Vegas at the start of October. Questions asked have gone unanswered and the fact is no one knows.

This isn’t just about an industry which feels it has been cooped up for too long and is longing to be able spread its conference wings in the fashion to which it had previously been accustomed, although that is part of the story. 

There is a similar enthusiasm for the European events lined up in the calendar including, of course, iGB Live! and iGB Affiliate in Amsterdam later this month.

But it’s the potential for getting back into the US that is proving to be the biggest area of frustration. As it stands, travel between Europe and the US is still severely restricted and the chances of this changing between now and early October are, it would appear, vanishingly slim.

Instead, the biggest event in the gaming calendar will go ahead with very little by way of European bodies on the ground.

Given the past 18 months, it might be said this is an inconvenience, at worst, and would merely entail a bit of smart work on the travel reservation cancellation front. Those flight vouchers will (surely) be used one day.

Yet, the fact that the European no-show at G2E is occurring right now comes with special significance. 

Like every other sector, the online betting and gaming sector has had its fair share of disruptions during the ongoing pandemic. But the nature of how the sector operates meant the work-from-home directives didn’t truly lead to too much disruption. Meanwhile, as one executive put it earlier this year, deals were easier to complete because none of the decision-makers were jetting off anywhere.

In fact, the sector has barely suffered any significant disruption other than a couple of months when the sporting calendar was all but obliterated.

The momentum for sports betting and online gaming in the US has continued unabated through the pandemic period. Since March 2020 major moves have taken place to further open up the market with Arizona the latest to add to the list. 

This is the source of the European angst.

Sweeping all before it
Even before March 2020, it wasn’t hard to envisage a future where the US market opportunity was everything.

The escalating TAM estimates for the US market might partly just be the hype machine in action. But when matched up with the evident enthusiasm of investors (think the gaming-related SPAC deals and the emergence of online-only betting and gaming plays) and the chatter around convergence involving some very big names indeed (Caesars and ESPN for, instance) it’s clear the numbers are acting like a centrifugal force.

In comparison, developments in the European sector might as well be happening on a different planet. Whether you are talking about Sweden, Spain, the UK or Germany, all the talk is about regulatory roadblocks. The European sector has likely never felt so hemmed in and it’s not all about not being able to travel.

Of course, not everyone in Europe feels left behind. Flutter Entertainment, for instance, is the market leader via its ownership of FanDuel; companies as diverse as Bet365, Kambi, Better Collective, Sportradar and Evolution are representative names of a sector-wide foothold; another way of looking at the talent drain is that European expertise is still very much desirable.

But in all instances, the flow of traffic is all one way. The levels of enthusiasm in what is happening over there far surpass any flickerings of interest in the erstwhile leading hubs of the UK, Gibraltar, Malta or the Isle of Man. 

It is perhaps an irony that in a world where point of consumption has supplanted point of supply, the European industry should now find itself cast aside as an offshore adjunct.

Does not being at G2E change anything about this prognosis? Not truly. Change was happening before the pandemic and has continued while it still raged. G2E will be there next year and the Europeans will surely be packing out the flights. 

But when they finally do arrive it won’t just be the name of the airport they arrive at that will have changed.

Scott Longley has been a journalist since the early noughties covering personal finance, sport and gambling. He has worked for a number of publications including Investment Week, Bloomberg Money, Football First, eGaming Review and Gambling Compliance.

The business, which is licensed for Swedish-facing websites such as Redbet.com and Williamhill.se, failed in its duty to ensure that only permanent residents in Sweden were able to register for accounts during the opening months of the licensed Swedish market between 1 January and 31 July 2019.

Evoke has been ordered by Spelinspektionen to take verification measures regarding the customers who validated their accounts manually during this seven-month period and provide all details to the regulator by 9 November.

A Spelinspektionen investigation triggered in 2020 looked at how Evoke had handled the migration of existing customers following the introduction of the new licensing system at the start of 2019.  

Under Evoke’s verification system at the time, some existing customers were able to manually confirm their details and then provide copies of documents for the purpose of ensuring the their identity and address, such as an ID document or recent bill.

According to the Spelinspektionen investigation, no examination was made of the information supplied in the documents against some other sources unless the customer’s risk profile indicated an increased risk from a money laundering perspective. This failure to adequately check documents meant Evoke breached its licensing commitment to ensure that only people permanently residing in Sweden were allowed to register.

The regulator was satisfied by Evoke’s verification system since August 2019, by which registration of new accounts, and validation of old accounts, is only allowed via Trustly’s ‘Pay N Play’, which requires BankID.

Evoke Gaming was one of two MRG subsidiaries, alongside Mr Green, to be granted a Swedish licence back in December 2018. William Hill subsequently acquired MRG in early 2019.

Last month, William Hill-owned operator Mr Green was issued with two separate warnings and penalty fees totalling SEK31.5m (£2.6m/€3.1m/$3.6m) from Spelinspektionen in relation to KYC, AML and responsible gambling failures.

Spelinspektionen issued the operator with a SEK30m penalty relating to failures in its duty of care with regards to responsible gambling, and a further warning and SEK1.5m penalty for failures in its anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) responsibilities.

Speaking at the International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAGR) conference, Miller spoke of how the worldwide growth of the gambling industry “heightens old challenges and brings with it new risks as well”.

One issue highlighted by Miller was the growth of the industry happening at a faster rate than regulators can handle. He cited the UK market as an example whereby gambling is a £14.1bn industry by Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR), whereas the regulator’s budget stands at £18m per year.

Miller said: “Whilst I’m not suggesting that a regulator needs to match the resources of the regulated we at least need to be properly equipped to keep pace with the speed at which the industry is innovating and evolving.

“The emergence of a number of international gambling giants, with the resources to bring time consuming and expensive legal challenges to regulators across multiple jurisdictions, shows just how much internationalisation could disrupt our work.”

The expansion of operators outside of their jurisdictions was also mentioned as a problem for operators, as Miller suggested it is difficult for regulators to oversee a company in one place when it continues to branch out into other areas.

Furthermore, Miller believes that the different gambling cultures of various jurisdictions mean different approaches to regulation – thus making it more difficult to find a uniform approach and “meet the expectations and requirements of all jurisdictions”.

Miller added: “Internationalisation isn’t going away. It heightens and evolves old risks for regulators and it also brings about new challenges as well. But as is often the case, the answer to the risks and harms that come with internationalisation, do not lie in trying to claw our way back to a simpler time. They lie in being even more open to the change and from embracing the opportunities that come with such an attitude.

“Let’s continue to work together, to collaborate and to make gambling fairer and safer for all. We at the Gambling Commission are ready to take the next step and I am sure we are not alone in that.”

Miller also took the time to mention the impact of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19).

A survey conducted by the Gambling Commission highlighted the change in betting habits during the pandemic, such as the increased popularity of esports.