Month: March 2023

This announcement makes Massachusetts the the 26th US state in which Paysafe offers its solutions to operators. 

With this expansion also comes the extension of multiple partnerships the payment supplier has with US operators.  

Draftkings and Paysafe have a ten-year partnership that spans twenty-one states that will continue in the Bay State. Additionally, the payment supplier’s eleven-year, twenty-one state partnership with Caesars Entertainment will also remain.  

Zak Cutler, president of Global Gaming at Paysafe, comments on his enthusiasm towards the expansion.  

“We’re excited to expand into Massachusetts, my home state and an important milestone in the evolution of the U.S. iGaming industry, with its passionate sports culture and pivotal industry role in the development of daily fantasy sports and now sports betting,” he says. 

“We’re also proud to extend our longstanding relationships with several major sports-betting partners into this new market, and we look forward to helping them maximize their player acquisition and retention in Massachusetts, just as we’ve done in multiple other U.S. states.” 

Massachusetts sports betting success

The state’s sports betting history is young. The market officially opened up on January 31, 2023.

Already the state has reported a $2.0m betting revenue in opening month.

Additionally, its online operations opened up on March 10, 2023. DraftKings, FanDuel, WynnBet, Caesars, Barstool and BetMGM have already kicked off in the state.

Betr, Bally Bet, Fanatics and Betway are also anticipated to launch in the future.

According the suit, the TinBu founders were approached by Lottery.com – known then as AutoLotto Inc. – in 2017 regarding a potential acquisition of the business.

The suit alleges that the two parties reached a written agreement by 2018, in which Brier and Tu were supposed to receive millions of dollars in cash, a number of cryptocurrency token investments in AutoLotto and a guaranteed five-year employment contract to continue working for the post-merger combined entity.   

The plaintiffs, who are represented by Morgan & Morgan, said that – following the closing of the deal – Lottery.com failed to make the first of many promised payments. They also said that the business failed to deliver the promised tokens, making that aspect of the deal worthless.

“Our clients built a business from the ground up, but instead of being rewarded for their hard work, they had their company essentially stolen out from under them,” read a statement from the plaintiff’s lawyers John Morgan, Roger Brown and Benjamin Webster. “We hope to recover what Mr. Brier and Mr. Tu are owed and hold other companies like this accountable.”

Breach of contract

Following a number of attempts to resolve the dispute through modified agreements, which the suit alleges Lottery.com also failed to honour, the two parties eventually agreed to a new settlement and employee agreements.

The suit further alleges that Lottery.com continued to breach its contract, leaving more than $10m unpaid to Brier and Tu – despite the acquisition now being years in the past and Lottery.com having used the company to attract new investment.

The suit also makes reference to Lottery.com’s more recent issues, arguing that the business defrauded them and other investors by including “material misrepresentations” about the financial status of the company. These dated back to before the company went public in November 2021.

In addition to naming the TinBu subsidiary and Lottery.com, the suit also places blame on former company president, treasurer and chief financial officer Ryan Dickinson, as well as former chief revenue officer and director Matt Cleminson.

According to Brier and Tu, these defendants had the power to control the contents of the businesses SEC filings, press releases and other market communication.

“Because of their positions with Lottery.com, and their access to material information available to them but not to the public, the individual defendants knew that the adverse facts specified herein had not been disclosed to and were being concealed from plaintiffs, and that the positive representations being made were then materially false and misleading,” reads the suit.  

Inside story

The filing also makes allegations relevant to a number of past incidents in which Lottery.com admitted to failings in its financial records and accounting. On 15 July, the business disclosed in an SEC filing that Cleminson had resigned effective immediately, with the organisation also stating that an internal investigation had found that the business overstated its cash balance by $30m.

The suit also says that the plaitiffs discovered after the fact that this falsely declared balance was the result of a scheme orchestrated by Cleminson, where he arranged for the money to be briefly deposited in the account in order to mislead auditors.

Meijdam was elected to the position during a general meeting of members yesterday (29 March) and will assume the role with effect from 1 April. He replaces Aad Kobus, who had been serving as interim chairman of the organisation for some time.

A highly experienced professional, Meijdam has served in a number of leadership, senior and directorship roles during his career including mayor of Zaanstad and Lelystad, and deputy of the province of North Holland.

Meijdam has also worked as an advisor, commissioner and director of various organisations and companies.

“As chairman, I would like to work together with the members,” Meijdam said at the meeting. “They have important issues on their agenda, which I am happy to commit to. But first of all, I want to get to know the members and the various stakeholders in the coming period. 

“Many Dutch people enjoy our activities. We would like to serve them in a modern way, where fun and responsible gaming go hand in hand.”

Outgoing interim chairman Kobus added: “We have found an experienced director as chairman in Henry Meijdam. As a sector, we face various challenges in and around politics and entrepreneurship.

“With Henry’s experience and profile, we want to put Van Kansspelen further on the map and best represent the sector.”

This year, the organisation submitted a performance scorecard to the government with a forecasted GGR 33.13%, or P60.90bn, higher than the company’s P183.90 2022 target for industry. The total is also 14.2% higher than the P214.33bn that the Philippines actually achieved in 2022.

Pagcor chairman and CEO Alejandro H. Tengco said that the increased target is a result of the strong growth of the gaming sector in the previous year.

“Since the lockdowns were eased in the country late last year and gaming venues reopened, customer confidence slowly returned and the attendance in our owned casinos slowly improved,” he said. “Our licensed casinos likewise recorded a major revenue growth.”

Of this total, Pagcor targets P68.49bn to be generated by the business’s own operations in 2023.  “This amount is 36.6% increase from our P50.13 billion target in 2022 and 24.41% higher than our 2022 income from gaming,” said Tengco.

Further targets

Pagcor says it also aims to be able to fully pay its obligations to various agencies, as well as achieving P1.02bn in profit from its gaming activities. In addition, the organisation aims to collect 98% of licences and regulatory fees from Pagcor’s regulated gaming entities.

The company also endeavors to “retain its ISO:9001:2015 certification; 100% attainment of 2023 deliverables; 100% completion of transactions within the prescribed period; revision of the agency’s Board-approved Competency Framework; and establishment of competency baseline for employees.”

In service of this goal, Tengco said that the organisation would aim to improve both its regulatory functions and business operations.

 “We will ensure that our plans and programs for 2023 will be generally beneficial to our industries, putting foremost the interests of responsible gaming and of nation-building,” he said.

Despite Pagcor’s ambitions plans for developing its gaming operations, the entity said that it is currently “seriously considering” divesting itself of its commercial operations to become a solely regulatory entity.

Players in Germany will now have access to a range of online gambling services through Mr Green, with the website operating on the existing 888 platform.

The launch represents the first time that the Mr Green brand will be available on the 888 proprietary technology platform.

“Mr Green will be the group’s spearhead brand in the German market, alongside our 888 brands,” 888’s vice president, head of poker and managing director for rest of world, Amit Berkovich, said. “Its launch is a great example of what focus, collaboration, and dedication can deliver. 

“We’ve been live since late March, thanks to the existing 888 platform in Germany and the powerful collaboration of all teams across the business who have enabled a totally new set-up in record time.

“We are excited to introduce thousands more players in the market to our enhanced offer and look forward to bringing other Mr Green markets onto our single technology platform in the coming months.”

The launch comes after the Great Britain Gambling Commission this week ordered William Hill Group, which is operates Mr Green and is owned by 888, to pay a record £19.2m over a series of social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures.

The Commission noted a number of breaches by Mr Green, as well as WHG International, operator of WilliamHill.com, and William Hill Organisation, which runs 1,344 land-based gambling premises across Britain.

There’s been a wave of criticism of the industry, and that has arguably ended any hopes of igaming expansion for this year. Sports betting progress has also been stilted so far.

Massachusetts may have launched mobile, and Kansas is live, but where might the industry expand next?

Remember, we’re now live on Spotify!

Hope for sports betting regulation

As Brandt says, sports betting legislation always makes it through at the end of the session. There’s still hope for progress in multiple states. 

There’s plenty of potential still out there, perhaps most notably for Texas sports betting.

Last week’s guest Governor Rick Perry is a strong supporter of a constitutional amendment to allow mobile betting. There’s been one committee hearing to date, with contrasting voices arguing for and against mobile wagering in the Lone Star State.

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Prospects in the Peach State

Georgia sports betting remains in play thanks to the Lieutenant Governor who Brandt feels is making sports betting regulation a priority. 

Sports betting in Kentucky should be a “no brainer” Brendan says. But with a 30-day legislative session it’s going to be tight. It’s the closest the Bluegrass State has come to regulation in recent memory. 

There’s also potential in states such as Missouri and North Carolina. In Missouri, the big question is whether a bill makes it through the Senate.

In North Carolina Brandt remains confident, though Brendan fears it’s going to be Groundhog Day, again. 

The deal with Punch is set to launch today (30 March) and will entail Better Collective running a sports betting section in English on the Nigerian brand’s website and digital platform, Punchng.com.

As part of the agreement, Better Collective will also use its technology and content team to help Punch’s readers with any gaming decisions they might make in the digital sports entertainment market.

This agreement marks Better Collective’s first media deal with a brand from Africa.

Better Collective co-founder and CEO Jesper Søgaard indicates that more is to come from the company in terms of activity within Africa.

“We are very proud to partner with such a well-established news media like Punch,” said Søgaard. “Not only will we be partnering with Nigeria’s market leader, but this partnership also allows us to establish a presence on the African continent.”

Adeyeye Joseph, managing director and editor-in-chief of Punch, believes the deal can help his brand reach a wider audience group.

“We are excited to work with a passionate technology-driven partner like Better Collective,” said Joseph.

“We hope that this partnership will help PUNCH to serve Nigeria’s growing sports betting community with high quality content while also helping our company to further its audience and revenue goals.”

Share capital increase

Recently, Better Collective’s nomination committee proposed a range of financial actions for the company ahead of its annual general meeting. This included authorising the board of directors to increase the share capital in the company.

It also wishes for Jens Bager and Therese Hillman to be re-elected as chair and vice chair of the board of directors, respectively.

Since the opening of the Danish market in 2012, the country’s regulator has attempted to block sites that target Danish consumers without a licence.

While Spillemyndigheden said that it can often appear than the illegal market is growing in size, the regulator said that it is ultimately limited, and that the increasing number of blocked sites is more an expression of the increased focus the authority has had on the unlicensed sector in recent years.

In 2022, the organisation blocked 82 sites – a record total banned in a single year. This yearly record followed on from the previous highest total blocked – which occurred the year before in 2021 when the body blocked 55 sites.

In 2022, the Authority – in collaboration with the Danish Tax Agency’s anti-fraud unit – carried out a number of investigations ino potentially illegal sites. Additionally, the regulator experimented with using a third party to lead the investigations, but ultimately found that the private entity was not able to prove themselves more effective than the anti-fraud unit.  

Spillemyndigheden said that it had observed that increasingly access to illegal gambling is being organised via Facebook groups. In addition, the regulator said that it had noticed illegal gambling advertisements and search results on Google.

As a result of this, the regulator said that it began collaborating with Facebook in order to close a group or delete a post if it features illegal gambling. While as of yet the organisation has not established a similar partnership with Google, Spillemyndigheden said it was “in the process” of doing so.

“The Gambling Authority is working to establish more collaborations with other media where we see that illegal gambling or the illegal dissemination of gambling is taking place,” said the regulator.

“If you as a citizen want to help the Gambling Authority in our supervision, we encourage you to document the gambling bid with pictures or video and a link to any websites,” it added.

Illegal affiliates

The Authority also reported the numbers of affiliate websites which it had discovered driving user traffic to the unlicensed sector. It said that unlicensed offerings often explicitly advertise to those who have registered for the Danish self-exclusion system ROFUS, by using phrases such as “Play outside ROFUS”.

“It is a clear breach of the purpose of the Gambling Act, which is, among other things, to protect young people or other vulnerable people from developing gambling addiction and to ensure that games are offered in a fair, responsible and transparent manner,” said the regulator.  

“Therefore, there is also a requirement in gambling legislation for a register that allows the individual citizen to exclude themselves from gambling as well as a requirement to be able to identify online players.”

House Bill 347 was first introduced on March 13 and passed on its third reading yesterday (March 29).

If passed, the bill would authorize the state’s Commission to license a minimum of 10 and no more than 12 interactive sports wagering operators.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

Players in Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming will now be able to access the DK Horse app.

The app allows players to partake in pari-mutuel wagering on horse racing. Wagers can be placed on a number of renowned horse races, including Churchill Downs’ products such as Oaks and Derby.

Read the full story on iGB North America.