The National Survey of Gambling Attitudes and Gambling Experiences (NGAGE) is the first national research report on gambling attitudes since the National Gambling Impact Study Commission in 1999.
The report highlighted the ongoing problems with young people and problem gambling. Half of under 35s surveyed chose “yes” to at least one of four questions that indicated a risk of problem gambling, compared to only 10% of over 65s surveyed.
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The acquisition was made via a share subscription, with 500.com purchasing a total of 169,354,839 shares at a price of HK$0.62 per share, as per a deal agreed in January.
500.com now holds a 54.3% ownership interest in Loto Interactive, increasing its existing holding from 33.7%.
In relation to the subscription, Loto Interactive has completed its acquisition of the remaining equity interests in indirectly held subsidiary Ganzi Changhe Hydropower Consumption Service Co.
Loto Interactive purchased the interests from two sellers for a consideration of approximately $104.4m, increasing its ownership of Ganzi Changhe to 100%.
Pursuant to the Hong Kong Code on Takeovers and Mergers, 500.com will now be required to make a cash offer to acquire all the remaining shares of Loto Interactive at $0.75 per share.
In addition, 500.com said it will now make a cash offer for the cancellation of all options of Loto Interactive, again in accordance with the Hong Kong Code on Takeovers and Mergers.
The business’ revenue was down 40.6% when compared to the same segments in 2019.
Sportech chief executive Richard McGuire said it was an extremely difficult year for the business because of the impact of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, but noted that it performed better than its March expectations.
“Covid-19 created unprecedented challenging conditions for our businesses and the industries we serve,” McGuire said. We continue to take the necessary actions to safeguard the Group and to progress our strategic agenda.
“In line with this, the Group took steps to generate tangible investor returns by exiting certain businesses and assets, advancing the sale of the racing and digital division’s Global Tote business to BetMakers, the sale of the Bump 50:50 raffle business to Canadian Bank Note, and the disposal of a freehold property in Connecticut.
“Despite the challenging global environment, our performance in 2020 was better than initially forecast in March 2020, with Sportech delivering on key 2020 performance metrics, namely cash generation from operational activities, effective capex management, and delivery of a more efficient lower operational cost base going forward, resulting in only a modest cash outflow since the outbreak of COVID-19.”
As it sold the Global Tote business during the year, wagering at venues made up most of the continuing Sportech business’ revenue, down 36.0%.
Food and beverage sales at those venues brought in an additional £1.5m, down 66.5%.
The business made £2.9m from its lottery business, down 43.3% year-on-year.
Sportech paid £9.4m in costs of sales, for gross profit of £10.5m, down 42.6%.
After marketing and distribution costs of £319,000, down 62.0%, Sportech was left with £10.2m, 41.7% less than in 2019.
The business then paid a further £12.3m in operating costs and £261,000 in investments for an adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) loss of £2.3m.
Following share options, depreciation, amortisation and impairment, Sportech’s operatingloss was £10.0m.
It incurred a further £557,000 in finance costs for a £10.6m pre-tax loss. After a £297,000 tax benefit, Sportech’s overall loss from continuing operations was £10.3m, 41.7% less than the same segments lost in 2019.
In addition, the operator’s Global Tote business, which was sold to BetMakers, and its Bump 50:50 business, which was sold to Canadian Banknote, made a combined £2.6m loss after recording revenue of £25.7m.
When these segments are accounted for, Sportech made a final loss of £12.8m, which was 11.7% less than 2019’s loss.
McGuire added that the business was currently engaging with the Governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont, following statements “that appear to deny Sportech equal rights to a Connecticut State Sports Betting licence” as the state looks to expand its sports betting offering.
Lamont has confirmed his intention to launch betting and igaming in his State of the State address in January, but current plans involve the state’s two tribal operators: the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe and the Mohegan Tribe.
With years of experience, operators have become adept at getting customers onto their sites.
But as key channels may get shut off thanks to tighter regulation, increased competition and – in the US – a need to shift from investment to profitability, these operators need to find ways to maximise the value of those customers, and that means finding ways to retain them and encourage them to bet.
To Yoav Ziv, vice president for sales and business development at LVision, engaging customers is the most natural way for operators to differentiate themselves.
“All operators, at the end of the day, want things that will increase turnover,” Ziv says. “But assuming that everyone is offering similar markets, that they have similar general offerings, it becomes about engagement.”
His business’ BetBooster product is one in a wave of new attempts to increase engagement through personalised content.
Looking at historical data and live events, the product tracks trends and patterns to help inform punters’ bets.
This data is then personalised, offering players insights specifically related to the bets they have placed in the past.
“After one or two months, we’re going to have a lot of data,” he says. “It is of course collected anonymously – but we know that the anonymous player likes to bet on Asian handicap markets on the Premier League, so we can offer tips and insights about those games. Or you can offer tips for similar markets and maybe try to expand the way in which the player bets.”
Freedom to choose
As these tools become more popular, they have become available for a wider range of markets, including for sports and verticals that may have been neglected when it comes to technological developments.
EquusForm’s Bet Finder tool, created by Jim Fitzmaurice and Michael Turner, shows a different side of personalisation for bet stimulation. Unlike tools which personalise themselves to a customer, it is designed to allow customers to personalise tips for themselves: showing a list of horses based on user-selected criteria such as form and odds. Viewers can then see the performance of horses in past races that meet this criteria.
“We made it twofold really,” Turner says. “We put the genie function on the top, so you can press one of three buttons and the genie will make selections for you. That can be maybe for someone who’s just starting to get into horse racing.
“But then we’ve also made something for the more astute punter. We come from a more form-reading background, but traipsing through newspapers, spending hours looking at form takes too long. The BetFinder cuts that down to second.
“The punter can choose their own criteria. They can have as much or as little criteria as they like and either way it can give horses in all the day’s racing within seconds.”
While tools to increase engagement have been popular in other sports, Turner adds that horse racing – despite being such a key sport for betting – had previously been left behind in this area.
“I think racing has been neglected for a lot of years,” he says. “The online sites have been jumping on the latest bandwagon. Horse racing is, believe it or not, on the rise, but bookies haven’t been putting out new products that engage these customers.
“In football, there’s a lot of different ways to bet and there’s lots of widgets, but in horse racing, nobody’s really done it.”
A hub for content
Streaming, by offering bettors the opportunity to watch while they bet, has been a clear way to increase engagement.
For Aviv Arnon, co-founder and vice president of business development at WSC sports, sports betting represents an opportunity to leverage assets that it already created. His business had been delivering sports content for media companies for more than a decade before venturing into the world of betting in an agreement with FanDuel, initially covering PGA Tour golf.
Rather than delivering betting tips, WSC creates personalised highlights for players.
“We work with whoever owns sports media rights, and we have a cloud platform that basically analyses every moment of a game and the context of the moments involved,” Arnon says. “So what was the moment, what just happened, who did it, how important was that moment.
“It analyses the footage of the broadcast, the reactions of the crowd and commentators and the statistics of the plays, and delivers relevant highlights.
“ We traditionally worked with media, with clubs with broadcasters, but now there’s an increasing convergence with other areas because of how consumption is changing.
“There’s a unique synergy with what we do and what betting operators want to achieve.”
Those highlights are then personalised based on betting activity, so players who bet on an individual golfer are likely to see highlights related to their performance.
Adam Kaplan, general manager of FanDuel, says that the deal represented a greater shift in general towards making the operator more of a home of sports content than ever before, stimulating betting activity by keeping customers around not only to bet but also to stay on top of sporting events.
“Content is an area where we’re investing very heavy and the opportunity to leverage WSC’s capabilities with great content was an opportunity worth pursuing and focusing on,” he says. “I think there’s a clear path to growing our addressable audience and reach in a way that can drive our gaming businesses.
“We can do that by enriching the customer experience through content and through experiences.
“This is just one step towards that, but WSC is definitely going to be a big part of that strategy.”
While this foray into betting only covers one sport for now, Arnon says you need only to speak to those involved with other sports and competitions to see that the appetite exists to broaden the scope.
“That’s already an opportunity where we could and will expand,” he says. “Our existing clients are all the major sports leagues in the world and they’re all thinking about ways to work with betting operators.”
Overcoming challenges
For Arnon, the move to the world of betting has had differences with anything his business had done before.
“It’s a little different,” Arnon says. “There’s a lot of the core of what we did for media in this, but there’s new ways to think of it when it comes to building a customer experience.
“We’re trying to create an experience that complements what FanDuel is doing and the ability to deliver the right video at the right time to the right person to incentivise them to come back involves different challenges.”
LVision, meanwhile, found much of the challenge concerned integration. The supplier therefore worked to create a version of its product that could be implemented easily.
“When we started with the product we offered it as an API solution, but it was rejected by many potential customers who said they didn’t have the resources, other regular excuses that customers like to use,” he says. “But then we made a shift to make it a widget, or maybe even more of a web component.
“There’s just three lines of code to include everything, including the language component.”
Turner, meanwhile, noted that working with operators to build the product, speed was one of the most important things operators looked for.
“What we tried to do with the BetFinder is to make it really simple,” he says. “So if any customer was new to horse racing they can just open the BetFinder, click a few buttons and then it’ll give them a few horses that they can add to betslip and place the bet.
“Everyone was after speed. Everyone wanted to know how fast you can go in and place a bet.”
Similarly, Ziv said he was surprised to find that an increase in the speed at which players place bets turned out to be one of the key benefits of BetBooster in A/B testing, alongside growth in turnover, betting volume and average size per bet.
New ways to personalise
While showing content based on past betting activity is the most obvious form of personalisation, both Ziv and Kaplan point out that there are other ways to personalise content too.
“We know how to collect data on logged in players and we know how to collect data based on cookies,” Ziv says.
“We have different levels of personalisation. So if we don’t know much about a player’s betting but we know their city or country or language, we can offer betting based on popular teams or sports in that region.”
Kaplan says that this type of customisation available in WSC’s product, meanwhile, can be used in conjunction with marketing activities.
“You can imagine if we’re running certain promotions or odds boosts, we might want to enhance that experience by delivering certain content to those users,” he says.
Ziv says that ultimately, allowing the player to be more involved in the betting process provides a huge number of opportunities for operators.
“BetBooster definitely allows that engagement operators are looking for because it offers a new level of betting,” Ziv says. “It involves mobile notifications. It creates a lot of new engagement opportunities for operators and for the punter it makes the customer feel more involved and more educated.
Similarly, Turner says that this has become more important than ever given the effects of the novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
“Having an online presence is important, but having a way to interact with customers has never been more important given everything that’s happened with betting shops,” he says. “That community aspect from betting shops is something punters will be looking to find something close to online.
“We probably understand the punter even more than the bookmaker, so we’re building our products around the people who really matter,” he adds.
“I always liken it to having a game of golf. If you have a really good game, you’re going to come back. If you have a really bad game, you’re not just going to snap your clubs in half and give up, but you’re going to need something to come back to.”
Overall revenue for the six months to 31 January 2021 amounted to $193.5m, up 3.8% on the previous year, when the Racing Industry Transition Agency (RITA) oversaw operations. RITA transitioned to Tab NZ in August of 2020 in line with the country’s 2020 Racing Industry Act.
Net betting revenue climbed 12.0% year-on-year to $164.7m, helped by favourable results in racing and fixed-odds sports, as well as a rise in turnover.
However, net gaming revenue slipped 2.7% to $14.6m, which Tab NZ said was consistent with a decline in gaming turnover. Other revenue was also down 41.8%, mainly due to an $8.0m fall in venue service cost recoveries to support the industry’s post-lockdown reopening.
Overall betting and gaming turnover was up 5.9% from $1.50bn in the first half of the previous year to $1.59bn. Tab NZ noted this was 14% ahead of expectations for the period.
In terms of expenses, turnover-related costs for the first half stood at $40.5m, up 2.8% on last year, but operating costs were reduced from $71.5m to $58.5m.
This left $94.5m in profit before distributions, an increase of 25.2% on the previous year.
Distributions to racing codes totalled $63.2m and Tab NZ also noted $4.8m in provision for undistributed gaming surplus, which left a net profit of $26.5m, up from a $15.6m loss in H1 of 2020.
Tab NZ said the three racing codes actually received $83.2m in distributions and other funding in H1. This comprised the $63.2m from Tab NZ’s operations, as well as $9.8m from betting information use charges; $3.5m from the repeal of the Betting Duty and $6.6m via a government support package for the racing industry.
More than $6.2m was distributed in commission payments to national sporting organisations, down 5% from FY20 due to reduced sport content during the year as a result of Covid-19.
“With this strong start, combined with the positive performance during the first half of this year, Tab NZ operated with a strong working capital and balance sheet position enabling it to further invest into the future and continue supporting the racing industry and sport,” Tab NZ said.
The Commission said its new strategy will be delivered through five priority areas: the protection of children and vulnerable people from gambling-related harm, a fairer market with better-informed customers, keeping crime out of gambling, optimising charitable donations from the National Lottery and improving gambling regulation.
The Commission’s three-year strategy shows similarities to the last one published, for 2018-21, whose key priorities were protecting the interests of consumers, preventing harm to the public, raising standards in the gambling market, optimising charitable returns from lotteries and improving the way the Commission regulates.
An increased focus on reducing criminal activity and increasing protections for minors and vulnerable people appear to be two key differences, in addition to changes to the business plan made in response to the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
The regulator’s annual business plan sets out the key milestones it hopes to achieve between April 2021 and March 2022.
It said that delivering a high quality, effective competition for the next National Lottery licence while maintaining the current performance of the existing licence is a key focus.
It also said that ensuring operator compliance with enhanced player protection measures will continue to drive its work in the next 12 months, while it continues to focus on the future with the review of the Gambling Act.
Referring to its response to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the business plan states that instructions given to the industry including the implementation of stronger affordability checks, the banning of reverse withdrawals and restrictions on bonus offers, have been further justified by additional Covid-19 specific data it has gathered since making the requests to the industry.
According to the commission’s income forecast for the next 12 months, it expects 34% of its income to come from the betting sector, 26% from casino, 12% from software, 8% from each of machines, lotteries and arcades, and a further 4% from bingo.
Staff expenditure is expected to make up 73% of the year’s costs, while other areas including IT, professional fees, office and administrative, research, recruitment and training and others make up the remainder.
The former 86th-ranked doubles player in the world admitted to multiple breaches of TACP rules between 2017-2018. This included section D.1.d of the 2017 and 2018 TACP, which states that no individual involved in the sport “shall, directly or indirectly, contrive or attempt to contrive the outcome or any other aspect of any event.”
Another breach includes section D.2.a of the 2017 and 2018 TACP where Maytín failed to report an incident of match fixing to the ITIA.
Section D.1.f was also breached as Maytín accepted money “with the intention of negatively influencing a Pplayer’s best efforts in any event.”
The 32-year old has been fined $100,000 ($75,000 of which is suspended), and is barred from playing in, coaching at, or generally attending any tennis events sanctioned by the sport’s governing bodies.
The ITIA was formed in 2021, having been known as the Tennis Integrity Unit last year.
The organisation handed similar sanctions for match fixing to Algeria’s Aymen Ikhlef last year, as well as Enrique López Pérez, and Bulgarian brothers Karen and Yuri Khachatryan.
Under the agreement, OGaming’s international and regional properties will now be fully powered by the FSB platform.
Full on-boarding of the OGaming network from its original supplier to FSB was completed two months after the two parties agreed their new partnership.
“To offer players the best experience in the market, we required a new, state of the art platform that would allow us to take our offering to the next level,” OGaming executive chairman Tom Golding said.
“FSB not only met but exceeded our expectations and we are thrilled to be powering our brands with their technology in such a short space of time.”
FSB chief executive Dave McDowell added: “This partnership with OGaming is significant for FSB as it further grows our global jurisdictional presence, marks our arrival as a major platform provider across Europe and proves that we can win significant business from our key competitors.
“Within just two months we’ve managed to complete the full-stack migration including data from OGaming’s previous platform provider to FSB and built the requisite regulatory features for German compliance including dual wallet integration.”
The acquisitions contribute to the 30% increase of fully regulated markets Entain is in, and introduce Entain into four new regulated European markets. With the acquired operators active in a combined six markets in which Entain was not already active, it brings Entain’s total number of regulated markets to 27.
Entain set out to acquire Baltic-based Enlabs in January 2021 with an offer of £250m. This was then increased to £314.6m after Entain increased its acquisition share offer from SEK40 to SEK53.
The acquisition was finalised in March as 94.6% of shareholders backed the deal.
Then known as GVC, Entain struck a deal to acquire Portuguese operator Bet.pt in October 2020.
GVC was rebranded to Entain in November 2020 with a priority to only operate in fully regulated markets.
“These new acquisitions are in line with our strategy to expand into new locally regulated markets” said Rob Wood, CFO and deputy chief executive of Entain.
“We are committed to operating only in countries which are either already fully regulated or in the process of regulating and will continue to look for opportunities to expand our business internationally.”
The news comes as Entain announces new affordability checks across 14 brands in the British market as part of its Advanced Responsibility and Care (ARC) initiative. Work is underway to customise the initiative for further markets throughout 2021.
The portal allowing the application for licences under the country’s Remote Gaming Act was due to open at 08AM CET today, coinciding with the legislation coming into force.
However the regulator put out a message saying it would not available, after another flaw was revealed during the latest tests.
An updated message is expected to be released this afternoon.
Officially, the Dutch Remote Gambling Act comes into force today, 1 April, with the market expected to open later this year on 1 October.
The market launch was originally scheduled for 1 January this year, after the law was planned to come into force in July 2020.
Three delays in the process saw the launch date of the market pushed back to October.
Yesterday (31 March), the KSA also clarified its auditing requirements for igaming licence applicants.
It said that, in contrast to the established policy rules for the licensing of online gaming, it has decided to accept either an assurance report or a report of factual findings from applicants.
The report of factual findings must be prepared by an auditor, and establish that the applicant is not in a state of bankruptcy, has not been granted a moratorium and that the applicant’s assets are not subject to an enforceable attachment.
The report should also include confirmation that the applicant has complied with rules around the guarantee of player credit, which varies depending on the method of provision.
The KSA said in March it expects to receive around 40 licence applications during the process, including several from international companies, and will probably grant around 35 licences.
A survey published this week by the Netherlands Online Gaming Association (NOGA) suggests there is little evidence of a wave of new igaming consumers awaiting legal offerings. The Ipsos poll of 1,004 Dutch citizens revealed that just 2% of respondents intended to open an online account once the market opens in October.
