Strategy Archives - Page 5 of 6

Inside the deal to bring News Corp Australia into sports betting

Following months – if not years – of speculation, News Corp Australia has made its move into sports betting, in partnership with Tekkorp Capital, BetMakers and seasoned industry executive Matt Tripp. Tekkorp president Robin Chhabra talks iGB through the process.

Less than two weeks after it announced a new advisory arm, Tekkorp Capital flexed its muscles by playing a key role in the deal that creates a formidable new competitor for Australia’s sports betting sector.

News Corp Australia has created NTD: a consortium involving Tekkorp Capital and TGW, which was formed by Sportsbet and BetEasy founder Matt Tripp.

This group has struck a ten-year supply deal with BetMakers to power a new sportsbook product. The offering is due to launch in the second half of 2022, in time for the pinnacle of the Australian racing season, the Spring Carnival.

Two of Tekkorp’s senior team, chief executive Matt Davey and president Robin Chhabra, will join NTD’s board. Chhabra explains that while Austra..

April 4, 2022

Marathonbet to “temporarily suspend” UK site

Sports Betting News Bookiecity

Marathonbet has temporarily suspended its services in the UK, due to “ongoing events in Europe”.

The business would stop allowing new customers to sign up immediately from today (4 April). Existing customers would then no longer be able to deposit or place bets until 14 April.

“As the Marathonbet brand is operated globally, recent and ongoing events in Europe have had a significant impact for us,” it said. “We regret to inform that we have taken the decision to temporarily suspend services offered on the marathonbet.co.uk website.”

The business did not give any indication of when the site may resume activity.

Both the Marathonbet.co.uk site and mbet.co.uk site will close. However, the Malta-licensed Marathonbet.com will continue to be active.

March 16, 2022

Betsson to reshuffle board with three new appointments

Sports Betting News Bookiecity

Betsson’s nomination committee has proposed Eva de Falck, Louise Nylén and Tristan Sjöberg as new board members.

In addition, the committee proposed Johan Lundburg as chairman, as previously announced, as well as the re-election of Eva Leach, Peter Hamberg and chief executive Pontus Lindwall to the board.

Tristan Sjöberg had previously served on Betsson’s board for six months in 2018. However, he stepped down at the time because he was “in a legal dispute with Swedish tax authorities regarding tax liability”.

Tristan Sjöberg

He is vice chairman of the TCSJohnHuxley Group and co-owner of Knutsson Holdings. He is considered an “active owner” of Betsson, as Knutsson is the operator’s fourth-largest shareholder, and so he will represent these interests on the board.

Eva de Falck

Eva de Falck and Louise Nylén were both proposed as independent directors. De Falck is a senior consultant, advisor and board member of Skandiabanken, and has also served as general counsel and a member of..

March 11, 2022

Scout CEO orders cost review after “unsatisfactory” Q4

Sports Betting News Bookiecity

Andreas Ternström, chief executive of fantasy gaming provider Scout Gaming Group, said the business would initiate a cost review after he was “not at all satisfied” with the supplier’s slow growth and rising expenses in Q4.

Revenue ticked slightly upward to SEK17.1m, after revenue of SEK16.9m in Q4 of 2020.

Expenses, meanwhile, more than doubled to SEK51.0m.

Personnel expenses grew to SEK13.7m, but most of the growth was in other external expenses, which were up 148.5% to SEK34.3m. Ternström said the increase in other costs was mostly related to marketing, plus a one-off SEK18m cost after expenses for tournament participation tickets had been “wrongly accounted for” in prior periods.

If the errors had been attributed to these previous quarters instead, expenses would have come to SEK33.1m.

Depreciation and amortisation also grew, by 50.2% to SEK3.1m.

As a result, the business made an operating loss of SEK33.9m, which was more than five times its operating loss in 2020.

After a ..

March 10, 2022

Staking a claim to betting: The transition from online casino to sports

Sports Betting News Bookiecity

Join Champion Sports for a best-practice guide on launching sports betting to complement your online casino offering.

As the global igaming industry becomes increasingly competitive, acquisition costs are reaching unprecedented levels as operators fight for market share. At the same time, consumers remain promiscuous and operators are struggling to extract the maximum lifetime value out of the players they have acquired, often at great expense.

This means single-vertical offerings for online casino are increasingly rare. Players want more, and if products are unavailable, they could move to a competitor. Do you really want to acquire a customer who then jumps to a competitor and stays there?

A key tactic to expand beyond casino is to move into sports betting. Not only will operators be able to offer casino players the opportunity to bet on sports, they can also unlock other upsides such as additional marketing opportunities, increased cross-sell, greater stickiness and more.

But la..

March 1, 2022

Flutter aims to use its scale to overcome short-term challenges

Sports Betting News Bookiecity

Online gaming behemoth Flutter remains confident that its unmatched scale will help it make long-term decisions in the UK, US and mainland Europe, as chief executive Peter Jackson and chief financial officer Jonathan Hill revealed on the operator's 2021 earnings call.

The operator revealed in its 2021 results that it struggled in some of its international markets, where Pokerstars leads its offering. In Germany, terms of the country’s Fourth State Treaty on Gambling allowed online casino nationwide for the first time but with strict conditions and high taxes, while in the Netherlands, operators that did not receive a licence were required to block all Dutch customers. Last year, the business agreed to acquire Tombola, which does hold a Dutch licence.

While these struggles impacted business in 2021, Hill said that the scale of the Flutter business meant that it could afford to work in difficult conditions.

“One of the benefits of having a portfolio is, just because international..

February 25, 2022

CDI to drop online betting and igaming businesses in 2022

Sports Betting News Bookiecity

Churchill Downs Incorporated (CDI) has revealed that it will abandon its online sports betting and online gaming business within the next 6 months, in what it described as the “next step forward” for the company.

The news came as part of an earnings call for CDI’s 2021 financial results. Its online product TwinSpires – which includes horse racing as well as sports betting and igaming – brought in $431.7m in total revenue for the year. However, TwinSpires also accounted for $325.4m in costs.

Bill Carstanjen, CEO of CDI, explained that the company’s sports betting and online gaming business had not performed as expected, emphasising the competitiveness of the space.

“When the US Supreme Court overturned the federal ban on sports betting in May of 2018, we had high hopes for the potential to build a profitable business in this space,” said Carstanjen. “Our initial strategy was to leverage a variable cost technology model and be disciplined in our marketing spend with a focus on bottom ..

February 22, 2022

UK attitudes towards gambling improve for first time since 2016

Sports Betting News Bookiecity

A survey from the Gambling Commission suggests British attitudes towards gambling are improving for the first time since the survey began, after a long period of worsening public perception.

The statistics come from the Gambling Commission’s quarterly telephone survey, which examines gambling prevalence, attitudes and rates of harm.

The regulator noted that December 2021’s edition, which saw 4,021 people polled, marked the first time in which responses suggested statistically significant year-on-year improvements in attitudes towards gambling since the surveys began in 2016.

However while attitudes softened when compared to December 2020, a majority of the population continued to express anti-gambling sentiments.

For example, in the year to December 2020, 63.4% of respondents said that “gambling should be discouraged”. However, in the 2021 edition, this total had dipped to 58.9%.

Similarly, the portion of the population who agreed that gambling was “dangerous for family life” drop..

February 17, 2022

Strong lottery showing helps Tabcorp revenue grow 2.2% in H1

Sports Betting News Bookiecity

Australia’s Tabcorp Holdings reported an increase in revenue for the six months ended 31 December 2021, with its lottery division the standout performer ahead of its demerger from the group.

For the first half of the operator’s financial year, revenue was up 2.2% year-on-year to AU$2.93bn (£1.55bn/€1.86bn/$2.11bn).

The largest contributor to the group total was the Lotteries and Keno division, comprising The Lott and Keno brands. It saw revenue increase 10.9% to AU$1.78bn in spite of keno venues being impacted by Covid-19 trading restrictions. While keno revenue was down 9.8% to AU$119.0m, lottery was up 12.7% to AU$1.67bn across retail and digital channels.

A highly visible retail network – comprising newsagents, petrol stations, kiosks and pharmacies – helped turnover grow 5%, while digital’s share of lottery turnover was up from 32.1% in the prior year to 36.7%.

Game development helped keep jackpot games and Saturday Lotto turnover growing. However, other titles, such as scra..

February 16, 2022

GiG CEO on first year of B2B focus

Sports Betting News Bookiecity

After refocusing on B2B in 2020, 2021 was the year when Gaming Innovation Group's new strategy showed return. For chief executive Richard Brown, it still only feels like the start.

Yesterday (15 February) Gaming Innovation Group (GiG) reported a 28.0% year-on-year rise in revenue for 2021. Following its divestment of its B2C assets in 2020, this marked its first full year as a purely B2B business, and while CEO Richard Brown says he is pleased with the performance he stresses that it’s still the beginning for the company.

Richard Brown, GiG CEO

“We made the shift in 2020, laid the initial groundwork, and in 2021 it started to come to fruition. We felt we had to work on a lot of stuff operationally, so as the results followed the strategic move in sequence, it really feels as if we’re gearing up.”

Revenue for the year was driven predominantly by GiG’s media business, which contributed €45.0m of the total, up 31.2% from the prior year. Brown has previously described that divi..

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