Month: November 2021

The average salary in the sector increased by 12% in the year to the end of June, “with increases of in excess of 25% now commonplace”.

Employers with recruitment backlogs are “having to pay whatever’s required”, said Pentasia managing director Alastair Cleland as he introduced the sector’s definitive salary and recruitment review for 2021.

Demand is highest for tech skills and expertise, which Cleland says is a challenge that has “required an entirely new playbook” for recruiting companies. 

Compliance and legal salaries were up 26% with regulatory developments set to continue applying upward pressure into 2022 and beyond. 

Sales salaries have also rebounded following a pandemic-induced slump, rising 26%. 

More encouragingly, however, Cleland said there are emerging signs of longer-term solutions to the highly pressurised situation in the talent market. 

“‘People-focused’ leaders have been some of the hottest hires of 2021; employers understand the need to create cultures people want to work in”, he said.

You can read Alastair Cleland’s analysis in full here.

Players staked $98.2m (£73.7m/€87.5m) on sports during the month, surpassing the previous record of $68.1m, set in the month prior. This represented a 108.5% year-on-year increase, from $47.1m in October 2020.

Amounts wagered on the DraftKings mobile sportsbook alone reached $68.1m, a 69.4% increase from the prior year. Retail stakes, via the operator’s three betting locations, came to $30.1m.

After player winnings were paid out, gross gaming revenue for the month amounted to $5.4m. This too set a new record, surpassing the previous high of $4.8m from November 2020. The total was also 134.8% higher than October last year and 42.1% up on September of this year.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

The past 12 months have seen truly unprecedented demand for igaming talent, exceeding even the frenzy of our industry’s early days. Employers across the sector are struggling to find talent to match the level and pace of investment.

Serious pain is being caused. Core operational teams are under-resourced. Expansion plans cannot be actioned. Investments are under-delivering.

Across the world, talent shortages now present a debilitating barrier to igaming’s growth.

This year’s eye-catching 12% average salary growth rate is therefore unsurprising. In many areas, though, increases of in excess of 25% are now commonplace. Employers with recruitment backlogs are having to pay whatever’s required.

Skills in demand
Tech skills are by far the most difficult to recruit and retain. It’s a challenge that’s required an entirely new playbook including specialist recruiting teams, fast-track hiring processes and an entirely open-minded approach to location and working structures.

Salaries for tech specialists rose by 12% on average this year, though chunky pay rises have been achieved by many as a dire talent shortage continues to bite. Pay rates are now almost entirely set based on skillsets, regardless of location.

Compliance and legal professionals are also winning big, also enjoying 26% salary growth. Their workload, though, is cripplingly high. Updates and upgrades to regulation will keep demand for expertise elevated well into 2022 and beyond.  

There’s also significant salary growth within sales, where rates have recovered sharply following a pandemic-induced dip, and data analysis, whose business-critical skills command a premium. People-focused HR leaders are also in high demand.

Investing for expansion
As industry investment rides high, 65% of companies are forecasting “workforce growth” in 2022, up 8% on last year. And yet, the reality of today’s recruitment market is one of increasing desperation.

Delays in recruitment are costly. Investors seeking financial returns can ill afford to wait for talent. Further increases to salary rates therefore seem certain.

Employers have been compelled to accept candidates’ numerous other demands too. Most notably, the industry is now moving ‘beyond location’. Hybrid work has emerged as the new standard, with remote work ubiquitous in certain departments.  

Flexible working policies have evolved too, though candidates are still requesting greater clarity and commitment upfront. Employers who are making clear commitments to flexible are enjoying better retention rates. They’re also finding it easier to recruit, particularly by accommodating those with childcare responsibilities.  

Encouragingly, there are now also signs of longer-term solutions to the talent shortage. ‘People-focused’ leaders have been some of the hottest hires of 2021; employers understand the need to create cultures people want to work in.

Companies are also increasingly committed to developing future talent, supporting graduate entry schemes and professional training.

In today’s highly pressurised talent market, it’s arguably only these kinds of long-term strategies that will win in the end.

For all the detail on how compensation has changed across regions, departments and roles, you can read the full iGB-Pentasia Salary Survey report here.

Earlier this month the tender process to select mobile licensees concluded, with two bids, involving nine operators, recommended for licenses.

This has seen a FanDuel-led consortium also featuring DraftKings, BetMGM and Bally’s Corporation selected, as well as a Iambi-fronted group of Caesars Digital, PointsBet, Resorts World, Rush Street Interactive and WynnBet. No operators were permitted to launch until the rules, which were first approved in August, were finalised.

Addabbo said the last step before the nine would be able to launch activity was to negotiate the location of the mobile betting servers, which will be located in the state’s land-based casinos.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

Revenue for the three months to 30 September reached SEK12.2m (£1.0m/€1.2m/$1.3m), down from SEK15.0m in the corresponding period last year.

Scout said this decline was primarily due to the fact there were fewer sports events than in the comparable period last year. The third quarter of 2020 was particularly busy, with sports leagues and events postponed as a result of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic took place.

However, Scout was able to continue with its expansion plans in Q3, making its US debut with the launch of a North America-focused social sportsbook platform, in partnership with the Masters Cup Series pool tournament. Additional deals have been signed with Skylands Events and University Sports for the baseball Frontier League, and with Backal Hospitality group, which will see it used as a gaming platform for sports bars.

Scout also launched its products with new top-tier clients, including Norsk Tipping in Norway, which rolled out Scout’s real-money fantasy sports solution.

“We have worked intensively to launch our tier-one clients,” Scout chief executive Andreas Ternström said. “These […] clients will generate growth during the 2022 and beyond, and launching tier-one customers is the most important cornerstone of our strategy.”

Turning to costs, total operating expenses for the third quarter amounted to SEK21.4m, down 25.4% from SEK28.3m last year. Personnel costs were 42.7% higher at SEK11.7m while depreciation, amortisation and impairment of property, plant and equipment charges climbed 70.6% to SEK2.9m, though other external expenses were down 63.0% to SEK6.8m.

This resulted in an operating loss of SEK9.2m, reduced from SEK13.3m in Q3 2020. After accounting for SEK2.7m in finance costs, pre-tax loss stood at SEK12.0m, compared to SEK13.4m in 2020. After paying SEK20,000 in tax, net loss for the period reached SEK11.9m compared to SEK13.m4 last year.

Loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) narrowed from SEK11.6m in the prior year to SEK6.3m.

Looking at Scout’s performance over the first nine months of 2021, revenue was 31.7% higher at SEK39.5m, though operating costs were also up 20.6% to SEK81.9m.

This was reduced by SEK4.2m in gains from financial items, for a pre-tax loss of SEK38.2m, which was an improvement on the SEK40.7m loss posted last year.

The business’ net loss after tax reached SEK38.1m, compared to SEK40.7m in 2020.

After the end of the quarter, Scout also revealed that Billy Degerfeldt is to leave his role as chief financial officer. Degerfeldt will take on the same position with another business but first serve a notice period of three months.

“We made a number of organisational changes during and after the end of the quarter as well as refining our business model, in order to additionally strengthen our focus towards tier-one clients, residing primarily on the European market,” Ternström said

“With the support of signing and launching tier-one clients and the interest our offer, we see great opportunities for future growth.”

The action was initially proposed by Bremen’s Interior Minister Ulrich Mäurer, who wants to raise the issue at the Conference of federal states’ interior ministers in early December.

Mäurer believes the ban would go a long way to preventing gambling addiction and protecting minors, as per the State Treaty on Gambling (GlüNeuRStv) which came into force in July.

On the TV programme Sport Inside, Maurer hit out at football clubs for partnering betting companies, saying they were profiting from a sector that is “particularly harmful to society”.

He was particularly critical of a perceived impact on younger people, who he said were at greater risk from exposure to gambling brands.

The DSWV was said to be “astonished” by such a notion, considering Bremen was one of the states to approve the State Treaty, doing so in March. The treaty permits gambling advertising for state-tested and secure offers, so as to protect consumers from unlicensed operators.

DSWV President Mathias Dahms has suggested that Mäurer’s claims were counterproductive, arguing that advertising plays a key role in helping customers distinguish legal from illegal operators.

“Since there are still many illegal operators active on the German market, advertising for licensed providers is vital,” Dahms said. “How else can citizens differentiate between safe and unsafe offers? 

“In years of negotiations, the federal states have found a good balance between making legal gambling visible to the public, and addressing concerns around youth and player protection. We assume that the Conference of Interior Ministers will be bound by the resolutions of all 16 state parliaments on the State Treaty on Gambling.”

A Handelsblatt Research Institute study suggested that the treaty’s implementation could see a 40% increase on players gambling offshore, potentially cancelling out player protection efforts.

Dahms added: “The state must not give the impression that it is measuring with double standards and that it wants to give preference to its own gambling products. After all, all holders of a German gaming licence – both state-owned and private – have been extensively checked by the authorities for their reliability and performance. 

“This also applies in particular to their advertising strategies. Advertising for illegal providers is prohibited by law, enforcement agencies should focus on enforcing this.”

In the wake of law firm Calcagni & Kanefsky LLP flagging alleged wrongdoing to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, Evolution has moved to clarify the fundamentals of its business model, responsibilities and operating practices.

The allegations, which wiped billions from the supplier’s market capitalisation, were given short shrift by the business. 

It explained that it works closely with regulators and operators to support and provide tools that blocks play from certain countries, including those on US sanction lists. 

For players in these countries – which include Syria, Sudan and Iran – to access Evolution’s content would require “sophisticated technical manipulation”. It was this sort of manipulation used to create the impression that its products were accessible in these markets, it claimed. 

This was done through an operator that was a customer of an aggregator offering Evolution products, using a virtual private network (VPN). This created the impression that a player was in a country in which its products were available, rather than one blocked by its systems. 

This connection was only established after multiple attempts to connect directly from the original IP address were made, the supplier noted. It criticised these efforts as “a deliberate course of action to circumvent a broadly accepted and well-established process to check users’ geographical location, with the purpose of discrediting Evolution.”

Evolution added that its partners are required to hold valid licences for markets in which its products are launched, and in many territories it has to be licensed as a supplier. To date it has secured B2B licences in more than 20 jurisdictions. 

As it does not handle players or their funds, it is down to its operator partners to carry out Know Your Customer (KYC) checks on each player, and make a decision on what players to accept. 

“It is the operator’s responsibility to comply with their regulation and their licence,” Evolution said. 

“The control of who plays the game is a strict responsibility of the operator.”

The supplier concluded by saying it has already contracted the NJDGE as part of its standard operating procedure, and launched an internal review to answer any questions from the regulator as quickly as possible.

Shares in Evolution closed down 2.51% at SEK1,220 per share in Stockholm today (24 November).

Having come from a B2C background, Nicola Fitton was thrust into a B2B environment through her appointment as Gaming Innovation Group’s (GiG) director of managed services. Fitton believes that her experiences in her previous role have perfectly prepared her for this new challenge.

“Moving into managed services and working for a B2B partner for the first time has allowed me to understand the complexity of a B2B set up, and understand more about what our clients’ needs are,” she explains.

“The managed services department was a proof of concept to start with,” she continues. “It was a new department with a small team. The task was very much to add value to the products and services we have, but also to prove its concept. Not just in terms of adding value from a client’s perspective but also making that revenue generating stream.”

That time spent learning how to shape her team, understand the customer and client needs, and bringing in experts where required, she adds, will translate into the larger scale operational resource planning she has been tasked with as COO.

Despite being new to the B2B sector, Fitton thrived in her role and oversaw significant growth in the managed services department in her two and a half years in the role.

“When I first started we had a very small team, probably around 10 or 11 people at the time,” she continues. “We’re now almost one hundred strong so it has grown significantly. I think as well because of the B2C background I had, I’ve been able to come in and shape those verticals to understand what we need.

“I’ve created a customer success vertical, we have customer experts as well which is the CRM sports and casino, we have a media team based in Copenhagen which has grown, and we also have the business operations which is quite a large resource-heavy team, but it’s very much about the player and licence care.”

Supplier pivot

Not only has the managed services team changed, but Fitton has seen GiG as a whole evolve significantly during her tenure.

Initially a B2B and B2C business when Fitton started, GiG’s sale of its B2C arm to Betsson in February 2020 sparked a major change in the company from top to bottom as it pivoted towards being a purely B2B organisation.

“When you’ve got a big complex organisation, it takes a while to unpick that,” Fitton admits. “It happens slowly, but surely. You’ve also got a lot of central functions that need to be readjusted in different areas. People then have to change their mind set from being B2C to purely being B2B, roles have to change, structures have changed, and processes have changed.”

Fitton says the business has come out of the transition into a strong position, and that such an adjustment has prepared the company well for any future hurdles it might face.

She continues: “We’ve evolved and matured as a business in doing so. We’ve added weight in the right areas with the right experts.

“I think we’ve got a really strong set up and the way we’re set up and having gone through the learning curve we’ve just gone through, I don’t think there’s any challenges as a company that we can’t take on. Its changed significantly but it’s all in the right direction.”

Sustainable growth

Looking forward, Fitton is well aware of the challenges her new role presents, but she is ready to face them head on.

She maintains that ensuring the team buys into GiG’s long-term vision and strategy will be crucial. “It’s about good communication, good strategic alignment, ensuring that we’ve got good key performance indicators and targets that sit under them.

“We can really be that partner of trust in 2022 where we can deliver growth for GiG and our clients, but most importantly on time and with quality.”

Although GiG is confident in its ability to deliver growth for itself and its customers, Fitton warns the company needs to be smart when taking on projects and not bite off more than it can chew.

“We don’t lack ambition or opportunity at GiG – it will always be that and Covid has accelerated that opportunity – but just because we can doesn’t mean we should,” she explains. “We only have finite resources, and with the greatest will in the world we have a platform and product team that can only deliver so much.

“It’s about cherry picking the right project which brings growth for us and our customers, but also that’s got that alignment and ability internally as well.”

While Fitton won’t divulge the entirety of GiG’s masterplan going forward, she suggests some of its future projects could include developing its retail to online solutions, and continuing development through Eastern Europe, Canada and the US.

For 2022, Fitton attests that a good start to the year is imperative in achieving such a goal, so as to ensure the company stays on the right path.

“It starts at the start of the year and from the very top – it has to all aligned. If you start to slide at the start of the year and things don’t start to go according to plan or we don’t resource plan accurately, you can knock off your entire roadmap for the whole year because you’re basically playing catch up.

“It’s about planning within our resource, picking the right projects, ensuring key alignment in each area of the business and executing with quality.”

Handle through its Isle of Man-licensed Rivalry.gg esports betting portal came to CAD$23.2m in the third quarter, a 141.0% year-on-year rise from CAD$9.6m generated in Q3 2020.

After payouts to players, revenue jumped from just CAD$474,833 in Q3 2020, to CAD$3.7m.

This brought revenue for 2021 to date CAD$8.9m, up 617.5% compared to the same period in 2020.

“In the third quarter we delivered an all-time record performance, driven by our relentless pursuit to become the leading next generation sports betting brand in the world,” said Steven Salz, co-founder and CEO of Rivalry.

“We are at the center of an inevitable generational tidal wave that is reshaping consumer products across multiple industries, including sports betting,” he added.

“Through market leading brand equity, innovative product development, multiple new gambling licenses in process, and an unparalleled team, I’m confident Rivalry will continue to demonstrate to shareholders why we can define this new generational paradigm in sports betting.”

Turning to outgoings, revenue-related costs totalled CAD$3.1m, a rise of CAD$2.8m year-on-year, resulting in a gross profit of CAD$573,266 for the quarter.

This did lead to a significant hike in operating expenses, which grew 177.5% to $4.8m. As a result the business posted a CAD$4.2m operating loss.

However, foreign exchange gains of CAD$2.0m offset this to some extent, resulting in a net loss of CAD$2.1m for Q3, up 66.8% from the prior year.

Since the end of the quarter, Rivalry has broken another record, after amounts wagered in October hit $12.8m, its biggest single month to date. That month also marked its stock market debut, on the TSX Venture Exchange, and saw it roll out Rushlane, a new real-money title it claims creates a new genre of ‘massively multiplayer online gambling games’. The business is also angling for entry to Ontario’s re-regulated betting and igaming market, applying for licences in the province.

“Having completed our direct listing on the TSX Venture Exchange shortly after this record quarter, adding additional capital to the balance sheet, and with zero debt, followed by an all-time record performance in October, we believe we are setting up for a strong 2022 as we head into the off-season for esports,” Salz added.

Williams will now be tasked with overseeing Wynn Interactive’s global day to day operations.

Williams joined WynnBet as chief operating officer back in October on the back of 20 years experience in the industry.

Prior to joining WynnBet, Williams served as Churchill Downs Incorporated’s (CDI) president of online gaming for five years, where he helped grow the operator’s interactive business

In addition to having 17 years’ experience of C-level roles across the US, Williams also founded sports data company Thistle Gaming, and spent 18 months as head of affiliates at William Hill.

Wynn Resorts recently announced that CEO Matt Maddox was stepping down from his role in 2022, with Wynn Interactive CEO and group chief officer Craig Billings named his replacement.

This coincided with the cancellation of Wynn Interactive’s merger with Austerlitz Acquisition Corporation as the company took its marketing strategy in a different direction. This followed comments made by Maddox following its Q3 results, suggesting that the investment required to compete in the US sportsbook space was unsustainable.

WynnBet was also recently approved for a sports betting licence in New York as part of a consortium led by Kambi. The company also gained market access in West Virginia via a partnership with Delaware North.