Under the five-year deal, Intralot will use current lottery equipment and infrastructure to facilitate sports betting for retailers and customers throughout the state.
The project is expected to go live in January 2023. So far, 700 retail locations have been approved for sports betting, with this network expected to grow to over 1,000 in the coming months.
Issued with a category 1 sports wagering operator licence for Massachusetts, MGM Springfield is now allowed to operate betting at a land-based facility, as well as on up to two online platforms.
One of its online skins will be provided by BetMGM – an MGM-Entain joint venture – which was also awarded a temporary Category 3 sports wagering operator licence. However, this came only under certain conditions.
BetMGM and MGM Springfield had initially applied individually for a Massachusetts sports betting licence. However, the relationship between the two entities created complications as MGM Springfield initially answered questions on the application with reference to BetMGM’s documentation.
As a result, the regulator delayed the vote on approving the licences until yesterday (19 December).
During the regulator’s open meeting, commissioner O’Brien raised concerns about Entain’s record £17m (€20.3m/$20.6m) settlement with the GB Gambling Commission.
The GB regulator found a series of social responsibility and anti-money laundering (AML) failings across its online and land-based businesses.
Commission staff also noted a penalty paid by BetMGM in Maryland.
Martin Lycka, SVP for American regulatory affairs and responsible gambling at Entain, spoke to the regulator at the meeting. He noted improvements Entain have made towards responsible gambling since the incidents in Great Britain, which occured between 2019 and 2020.
As a result of these concerns, BetMGM’s licence approval came with strings attached.
BetMGM must provide a vendor diversity list as well as timely updates on developments to confidential investigations.
The MGC recently awarded its first sports gambling licence to Wynn Resorts’ Encore Boston Harbor and WynnBET with a tethered licence to operate mobile-based sports betting.
ParlayBay said it would use the money to support its commercial growth plans in 2023 – including the launch of its ParlayPowers promotional tools – and to continue to expand its network of clients around the world.
This year, ParlayBay closed deals with operators including TipoBet365, TOPsport and Hub88, while most recently it signed an agreement with 7bet, with the operator to become the first to incorporate ParlayBay’s real-money gaming suite.
In addition, earlier this month, igaming veteran and Yggdrasil founder Fredrik Elmqvist joined the ParlayBay board of directors.
“We’re really pleased to have raised a considerable amount in our most recent funding round, especially given the current challenging climate,” ParlayBay chief executive Patrick Nordwall said.
“Fredrik joining our board is a fantastic addition as we ramp up our growth going into 2023. We’ve had a very good year and the money raised gives us the opportunity to drive things forward even quicker.”
Elmqvist added: “It’s a really exciting time to have joined ParlayBay and I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds. In just over a year, the company has shown to be a pioneer that places product innovation at the forefront of its strategy.
“Raising €1.0m in these tough times is a sign of strength and that we are well positioned in the market.”
Overall market revenue for the month amounted to $452.4m (£373.5m/€426.9m), up 4.6% from $432.5m in November 2021 and also 0.5% ahead of $450.2m in October of this year.
Analysing the monthly performance, retail slots remained by far the primary source of revenue for the state, generating $185.6m in revenue for the month, level with the previous year. However, retail table games revenue slipped 4.4% year-on-year to $79.2m.
The body last week issued a reminder that new rules will apply to its age-rating system for video games from 1 January. It specifically noted that this system will now include “loot boxes” – where a player uses in-game credits to purchase a random chance of winning an in-game item – as a factor in age ratings.
“In the future, in addition to content relevant to the protection of minors, possible online risks – such as purchasing or communication options – can also be taken into account in the process of statutory age marking,” the body said. “Specifically, the independent USK committees can now check in individual cases whether any usage functions could pose an increased risk for children and young people, for example in relation to chats in the game or unwanted expenses.”
The new rules themselves note that a higher age rating for a game would be appropriate if a product were to “impair or jeapordise” a young person’s relationship with gambling, “promote gambling, contribute to desentisation to gambling losses or give rise to unrealistic product expectations”.
Loot boxes have been a source of controversy across Europe.
In Belgium, the products have been banned since 2018. The Netherlands attempted to ban the feature, but a court ultimately overturned this ban. Spain considered banning loot boxes entirely, but instead opted to ban them only for minors.
There’s been more talk about the North American market recently than ever before, mainly due to the legalisation of sports betting states such as New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Kansas, this year alone.
But that’s not all, as appearing over the horizon, other states are soon set to follow. Ohio is the next to launch into the sports betting fray, from 1 January 2023, taking the total number of states with some form of legal betting to over 30.
Having acquired sportsbook technology provider Sportnco in 2022, industry leader GiG is set to take full advantage of the US opportunity by putting boots on the ground in North America.
Ben Clemes, with almost a decade in leadership roles across the business, is the man trusted to lead the assault. He has moved from his role as head of business development to GiG’s general manager of this market.
“This role for North America is more of an extension of the business development role I’ve been doing at GiG.” Clemes explains.
“This role is more focused on a market which is high in growth and a market that GiG is continuing to invest into, with our relaunch in New Jersey, launch in Ontario and upcoming launches in Pennsylvania and Maryland.”
Clemes has worn many hats at GiG, having spent over nine years overseeing the platform unit and commercial teams in the B2B division, before moving into a more centralised role to drive the company’s collective efforts. With his vast experience, it’s clear why GiG sees Clemes as the man that can realise its American Dream.
Having boots on the ground in North America is a huge part of GiG’s global strategy and with the inclusion of Sportnco to its offering, the timing couldn’t be better for GiG to push its presence in the region.
When Clemes’ new role was announced, GiG CEO Richard Brown commented: “With Ben’s long history at GiG, product expertise and local knowledge there is no one better to lead the US team.”
“I’m really excited to be moving and we will be setting up on the west coast, however with the North America hub supporting our three main business units, being platform, media and sports,” Clemes adds. “The fact that we support remote work, I imagine that we will have GiG employees spread out across North America.”
GiG had another record breaking quarter in the three months to 30 September, with group revenue for the period amounting to €22.9m (£24.1m/$27.5m), up 35.5% year on year. Sportnco has contributed to a significant uptick in platform revenue, and there has been a media blitz of new partnerships announced in recent months.
GiG is at the forefront of the European market, and has a strong foothold in the emerging Latin American region. So as it ramps up its North American client base, how can it replicate these successes in the US and Canada?
In Clemes’ view, it’s simple: “I believe the learnings that we have taken from many years of operating in diverse markets across Europe will benefit our partners in North America, like PlayStar and CrabSports.”
On a personal level, Clemes has history with North America, “For me the North American market is very special too. I spent seven years in Las Vegas before moving to Europe to switch into digital, so moving back is like going back to my roots in the gambling industry in a way. ”I really like the dynamics of the market, with so much variation from not only a regulatory perspective, but also from a customer experience across the many markets.”
GiG recognised the opportunities in North America early on having entered the market in 2018 with the launch of Hard Rock in New Jersey. Whilst the Hard Rock partnership has since ended, it provided valuable learnings that have informed how GiG works with other long-term US clients, such as Playstar.
“We have learned a lot since 2018, securing our licence in New Jersey at that time too,” he says. “Playstar has been able to benefit from this experience, however with any partnership I like to think that we all grow from each other, and with Playstar being very driven and experienced they’ve also inputted into the product development and delivery.”
It seems that GiG has had the takeover of the North American market in mind for a while, especially since it acquired online sports betting provider Sportnco in spring 2022 for €51.37m, which spearheaded its growth in the US market. With sports betting the only legal mobile gambling product for most states, Sportnco’s product offering has helped GiG expand across the market and give them an extra competitive edge.
“It has been really good to date,” Clemes says of the early stages of the acquisition. “We’re generating a lot of interest really early on which is great. The addition of the Sportnco solution has opened up many more markets.”
“We are also working to launch our next generation platform in the US with Sportnco integrated, which we’ll be using to power Crab Sports initially. We have also seen a lot of success in Ontario, going live with our first partner LuckyDays in addition to signing with a number of new partners in the market.
“The timing to establish ourselves more in the North American market could not be better!”
The ongoing battle for the legalisation of gambling in the US has seen some key states legalised this year, but others failed despite legislators’ best efforts. With the acquisition of Sportnco, however, GiG now has a product that is able to compete in sports betting across 30 plus states.
“The expansion of the legalisation of gambling in the US, led by sports betting in many of the states, was a motivation for the acquisition of Sportnco, so GiG has a competitive sports offering for the North American market.
“We expect many of these states to eventually regulate igaming which has always been a strength for GiG,” Clemes continues. “If we can lead with a strong sports product, build on our omni solution and then add our competitive casino solution when regulation permits, it is a win win for both GiG and our partners.”
With Clemes having been involved in the centralised business development team, GiG is in the perfect position to expand its offering across new states and territories. So how does it build this successfully? By working with local heroes like Crab Sports that helps them expand into newly regulated Maryland.
Speaking to iGB earlier in the year Clemes’ colleague Martin Collins discussed the opportunity a single-state brand such as Crab Sports offered. It may not have the resources of a multi-state operator, he pointed out, but “they do have the local know-how and the partnerships to bring customers to the brand”.
GiG partnered with Crab Sports in June 2022, its first US-focused partnership since acquiring Sportnco. With the market taking a while to add a mobile component to the live retail betting offering, excitement levels are rising in the industry at the prospect, making Maryland the perfect opportunity for GiG to push this along.
After all, industry estimates suggest revenue will top $200m in Maryland’s sport betting market. Clemes is especially optimistic about this: “We are currently in the product development process from both the customer perspective and also from a regulatory perspective. The branding, designs, tonality and the team of Crab Sports are really inspiring to work with too, so it has been a great project to work on, and we’re all really looking forward to going live.”
America isn’t the only market GiG have been targeting of late, however, having recently gone live in the newly regulated Ontario market with LuckyDays and SpinAway brands. It has followed this quickly by signing a deal with Kings Media Ltd for its King Billy brand and a head of terms agreement to bring an established land-based operator online.
With Clemes at the helm, GiG is more optimistic than ever about its successes across the pond. Whether it’s joining with new partners, or getting to grips with new regulations, Clemes is more than prepared to use his decade of experience to change the North American landscape for GiG and continue that run of record-breaking quarters.
“Our core strategy is to partner with strong brands in regulated markets, and that strategy has not changed. Our omni solution has the technology, it’s got the partners, and more than anything, it’s exciting!”
Ben Clemes is the General Manager for Gaming Innovation Group (GiG) North America, overseeing the company’s expansion into the US market. A co-founder of the company, Ben was previously the Chief Business Development Officer at GiG having been with the company since inception
in 2013, built on over 15 years of total experience working within the online gaming industry. Through his new role Ben will lead a strong US sports betting solution and enhanced platform, optimised for the US.
Big games mean big bets.
Amid the glory and the passion, the ghastly hope and the sweet taste of victory – you have punters putting their money where their mouths are and betting on things to happen. At the first week of the World Cup alone, more than 90 million bets were placed – with a lot more where that came from as the tournament went on.
For a sportsbook, this is a huge business opportunity – with a sting in its tail.
“Obviously those massive tournaments are huge acquisition drivers, there’s no secret about that,” says Andreus Hartmann, co-founder and CEO of Vaix, which was acquired by Sportradar earlier this year. “Everybody knows it – but they turn out to be horrible retention drivers.”
So that brings us to the post-World Cup churn. How big an issue is it?
“The churn? It always depends on how you define churn, right?” says Hartmann.
For Hartmann, this seemingly simple dynamic hides rich veins of complexity. The different bettors have different betting cycles – and a sportsbook must account for this.
Bettors come in all shapes and sizes. On a sportsbook you might have sharp punters looking for value, die-hard fans backing their team all the way, acca bettors hoping to strike gold, casuals who just pop in for the World Cup and maybe the Euros if they’re in the mood – and everything in between.
“Andreus is the weekend betting guy, right? He might be on holidays for three weeks because he loves to go surfing in Brazil and he’s not there for three weeks – then he comes back.
“But actually he’s already been churned and an operator would’ve already thrown money at him because of that, only for it to consider him gone. And then Alex is coming every day – so if he’s gone for a week, something’s wrong, right? And Zak, you might be completely different.”
Understanding players, and predicting their wants and needs is the goal of the platform.
Using deep learning, Hartmann’s Vaix system can build models of customer behaviour so that sportsbook operators can properly personalise and target promotions and offers to their users, mitigating churn.
Since Hartmann and his partner founded the business in 2017, many changes have taken place. After a while, his outfit began partnering with a company called Sportradar.
“And then we started dating, and then we got married,” said Hartmann, with a hint of mischief.
Since then, on 6 April this year, Hartmann says that not a lot has really changed from a development point of view. The team are “still doing what we were doing,” he says. “That was the reason Sportradar was interested anyway – ‘we really like what you do, keep on doing it – just only do it for our customers.’”
The system is configurable and flexible, and uses multiple model architectures, meaning that it can be optimised for different use cases.
“In its very simplest form: predicting a player’s value for the next 60 days requires an entirely different model than recommending the five best bets,” says Hartmann.
But getting the most out of the churn-mitigating system can often be a hit or miss process. Hartmann recommends failing fast and learning on the way.
“You need to have people who can fail and iterate, and fail and iterate and fail and iterate,” he says.
One example he notes is when they attempted to attach a postcode to the model in order to increase the system’s accuracy.
“When we put the postcode in the model, it worked very easy and very fast – but we found out the postcodes didn’t do much. If you’re in the lower-east side of New York and if you’re in Harlem, it didn’t do much.
“But as we were working with crypto operators as well, we tried the same thing – again, very fast. Let’s quickly put in the exchange rate bitcoin vs dollar – guess what it did – massive influence. Accuracy went up by 3-4%. So that capability of quickly adding and trying, having a testing framework built in was very important.”
Even a very well-calibrated offer, designed to perfectly appeal to a user, could be seen as spam from a certain perspective.
This can lead to a horrible click conversion rate from the operator’s perspective if the consumer begins to treat the promotions as such. This highlights the need to ensure that the content presented to the users is as targeted as possible
“We learned from sports, but especially from casino, that if you give users personalised content offerings based on interest data points – they will stay longer.
“We have case studies where we can show that after a month, or two or three – 20% more users stay active if you give them what they like.”
The truths that Hartmann’s platform uncovers are banal in many respects – but important to emphasise.
Consumers are not the same and differ dramatically in how they use sportsbooks. They will respond better to content better tailored for their preferences. And – if you ensure that the experience is a positive one – they might just come back to place that next bet.
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Scout set out plans for the changes during its Q3 report, with chief executive Niklas Jönsson at the time saying that the restructuring program would aim to secure profitability in all its partnerships and also decrease expenses.
Jönsson said Scout had too high of a cost base in relation to revenue, adding it was the opinion of the provider that it possesses a good product that has a “right to exist”.
As such, Scout sought to renegotiate several partner agreements and also terminate certain non-profitable agreements during the third and fourth quarter, with the process having now completed.
Having ended 11 partnerships over the two quarters, Scout now has 13 such arrangements left in place. Of these, eight are integrated and five are planned to be in full operation during the first quarter of 2023.
This includes a new agreement to provide fantasy sports to Brazilian operator Cartola, which is owned by DFS Entretenimento. The product is planned to be launched during the first quarter of 2023.
“Focus for the changes was to have only profitable partnerships,” Scout’s chief commercial officer Araz Heydariyehzadeh said. “None of the ended operations, which were entered into in previous years, had the required commercially buoyancy.
“It was essential for the company to close them so we can strengthen our focus on better existing and new partnerships. This was done under good cooperation with the effected partners without additional expenses.
“In addition, in the new agreements, the company has created a standardised offering regarding the company’s content deliveries. This leads to significant efficiencies and cost savings as well as even better quality in our delivery. We feel confident that we now have one of the market’s absolute best products in the segment.
“Furthermore, we have also renegotiated our commercial terms in existing agreements and implemented a new contract model during the year, for future collaborations.
“All in all, these measures mean that we now place the company in a completely different position, and for the first time ever in the company’s history, create good conditions for profitability in our B2B business.”
The restructure followed the news in September that Scout also announced it had raised SEK101m in a share issue process to help save the business. This came in the wake of a following a SEK17m commitment being discovered in the supplier’s accounts that it stated it had been previously unaware of.
The issuing process was approved by shareholder vote on 1 September.
Alongside the share issue, Scout initiated a major restructuring of personnel – laying off 68 of 131 full time workers, including in the company’s Lviv, Ukraine office, leaving just 63 remaining staff.
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