iGaming Operators News
SPORTS BETTING OPERATORS
- Bet365 enters Indiana in the US and Arizona, teaming up with French Lick Resort in Indiana and with the Ak-Chin Indian Community in Arizona, for a total of 9 states covered after Kentucky, Louisiana, Virginia, Ohio, NJ, Iowa and Colorado.
- Fanatics launches sports betting and casino in Michigan. Michigan is a key state, recording strong results in 2023 : total gross online gambling revenue, covering igaming and sports betting, increased 22.6% year-on-year in January to $229.6m.
CASINOS OPERATORS
- Netbet announced its launch in Denmark after securing a license in the country. The operator will provide slots, casino and live casino content, including titles from Push Gaming and Pragmatic Play (Sugar Rush, Razor Shark…)
- AirDice eyes NA launch with Ontario’s License. The casino game developers got its license, allowing to sell its games to casino operators in the country.
LOTTERY, BINGO & SLOTS
- SupremeLand Gaming secured its launch in the US by having the approval in Pennsylvania. The slots developer aims diversification by entering the NA
iGaming Affiliates News
Company Results
- ReferOn reported 35,7M clicks and 2.4M new registrations within its network of 18k affiliates.
- BetterCollective surpasses financial goals for 2023. The affiliate planned 315-325M in revenues but it looks like they’re going to reach 327M€ from their first estimations (not audited revenues so far – yearly results will be announced on 21.02 after market closes)
- XLMedia announced to its shareholders that 2023 revenues will be aligned with expectations. The FY revenues will be in the range of 50M$ with an EBITDA of 12M$. The group also disclosed it had $4.8M cash in bank. Even if the growth have been reduced due to US launchs slowing down, XLMedia remains positive on the US market, since it’s well placed for North Carolina launch mid-march, and expect with the US election to be an accelerator for the 20 remaining states where online sports betting are not legalized.
- GiG published strong 2023 results with €126M (51.1M EBITDA, 22.8 EBIT) for the whole group, up on 40,8% YoY. GiG Media counted for €89,1M in the whole revenues. 60% are coming from RS, 8% from CPA deals and 33% from listing fees.
- Raketech published 22.8M€ in Q4 revenues up 45.3% YoY, mainly drived by sub-affiliation. Although, margin are smaller in sub-affiliation business, making it more than double from Q4 2022 (from 4M to 11M€)
- Acroud announced its operating loss for 2023 has doubled to €26.4M as FTDs decrease. Revenues declined 8% in Q4 (YoY) for the affiliates, where SaaS revenues grew from 10%. For Q4, Acroud reported €4M in revenues from SaaS and €5,85M in affiliation. For the FY2023, Acroud reveals a total revenue of €39.35M€ (+27% from 2022), but EBITDA dropped by 31% to €5.46M. Affiliate activity recorded €24.43M (+57% YoY) with sports betting leading the portfolio… Acroud saw its casino vertical dropped from €5.8M to €1.9M.
General News
- BLS Invest (Microsoft investors) become the largest shareholder with no management ties in BetterCollective after having purchased 6.7% of the affiliate media group.
- NetRefer announced the launch of its Copilot AI. This “ChatGPT” for the affiliates allow the user to ask either complex questions (what are the top performing affiliates with the highest converted FTDs and net revenue) or performance-related queries. It will be launched in Q1 for a selected amount of partners.
- MediaTroopers has secured a temporary license from the Maine Gambling Control Unit, allowing them to promote sportsbook in Maine. The affiliate is now licensed in 14 states and active in 25.
- Catena Media’s CEO Michael Davy stepped down from its position with immediate effects. Goran Blomberg said the company faces lower growth and the affiliate need a new leadership to drive growth initiatives back.
- BetterCollective raises 1,081.9 Millions DKK (145M€) in order to prepare its M&A strategy for 2024. They already had 315M€ in bank facilities (some already spent, with the acquisition of Playmaker for instance), but they reinforce their growth pillar, and they are willing to dominate through acquisitions.
Interviews
- Magnus Linder, Director of Northwest Europe for Better Collective opens up on the latest developments for the affiliate. He discusses on the diversification of the company in nordics, moving forward to becoming the leading sport media group
- Michael Daly, CEO of Catena Media on the affiliate strategy “AI is upon us”. He also tackles the market potential in the US and **their will to try paid media strategies.**
- GiG’s CBO talks about what makes GiG the best in class in products for the industry, based on machine learning models. On top of that, he discloses a bit of their ambitions of growth, through strategic commercial initiatives. The provider will introduce at ICE London its Flagship X-Suite (CoreX, SportX, DataX and LogicX). DataX and LogicX are defined as “the brain behind the brawn” allowing the bookie to create business rules without codding.
- Paul Puolakka (CMO at Mr Gamble) discuss with Next.io regarding the affiliate strategy in the US. They also mentioned the key factor of success of their comparison tool, allowing to localize the content with specific preferences, promotional structures and regulatory conditions.
Market Moves
NEWS FEED
- Dutch’s KSA changed its regulation concerning “cashback” bonuses after few operators breached the law. For René Jansen, Chairman of the KSA it “encourages excessive participation”. Cashback bonuses are the ones where the players get part of their losses back.
- Apple launches Stats & odds app for top sports leagues. Called Apple Sports, this app supports PL, NBA, NCAA, NHL, Bundesliga, LaLiga, LigaMX, Ligue 1, Serie A and MLS. The app doesn’t support betting, and user can disable odds. The users can also set up their feed by choosing their favorite teams or leagues.
- US Gross gaming revenues reach all time high of £52.7 billions in 2023, mainly helped by the rise of sports betting.
- Eightroom unveiled Vpag in Brazil, a retention wallet in order to help operators keeping their players when the market become more and more mature (and hard ). This solution allows player to send money to their sportsbook account in “less than 5 seconds” but what makes it interesting to players is the “instant withdrawals” where it usually takes days. Launched in Brazil, Vpag wallet will also become a new competitor for affiliates, since it will offers best odds, best bonuses and best benefits.
- SuperBowl about to set a record in terms of players AND in bet ! 68 Millions of American adults are expected to bet… $23.1bn. (+35% from last year estimations. 46% of those are expected to be online.
- Pandascore released some insights regarding eSport betting, such as the most popular for betting (that could help us produce the right content…). Bettors are more likely to place bet in live.
- H2 Gambling Capital released its iGaming Dashboard, extanded to 2028. Sports betting would be the fastest growing vertical for the 5 coming years
- IGB released its Casino dashboard for January 2024. In this report, we can see the best casino game played during December, that could help us produce content regarding Casino.
M&A Moves
- Allwyn takes majority stake in Instant Win Gaming: the financial details were not disclosed but Allwyn is likely to acquire 70% of IWG. IWG has a portfolio of 250 games in more than 25 state lotteries around the world.
- XLMedia got an exclusive sports betting partnership with a Midwest news organization, called “Star Tribune Media Company”. This partnership deal arrives even if Minnesota (Star Tribune’s home state) have not authorized sports betting.
- Betano boosts its presence in LatAm with a brand new partnership with CONMEBOL Copa Americana. This deal run until 2028
- BetterCollective partners with former professionnal hockey player (Christian Eklund). The athlete will now produce social media content for the swedish sports fans on Svenskafans.com and Hockeysverige.
- Betsson acquired Holland Gaming Technology and the game studio Holland Power Gaming. Betsson now has a licensed operator for NL and its game studio. The deal, amounted for €27,5M. This acquisition arrives 7 months after Betsson withdrew its application to get its own license. The bookie registered record results in 2023 with €262M EBITDA.
- Stake agrees UFC sponsorship in Philippines and Macau.
- 20SHOTS, the affiliate marketing firm announced partnership with the football journalist Fabrizio Romano. Romano will elevate the marketing campaigns for the Opta Game Hubs.
SEO/SEA/PPC
- Corey Padveen returns with his review of the latest need-to-know updates from AI. For him, affiliates should think about using AI for casino reviews. He also gave his opinion on Google’s end of cookies and recommend gattering as much data as possible in order to build first party data and email marketing.
Regulatory Updates
🇺🇸
USA
- Georgia State takes another step toward regulated online sports betting. If passing into law, this bill would authorize 16 licensed operators. This bill now moves to the House to make it real.
- Illinois going to double the tax on adjusted gross revenues by July 2024. Nowadays, the tax is 15% and will reach…35% by the summer ! The state expect 200Millions in taxes to boost the state financial.
🇬🇧
UK
After the whitepaper, UK confirms maximum stake £2 for players under 25 and £5 for people over 25.
🇳🇱
Netherlands
NL’s Gov implemented a new regulation on Gambling Ads last July and is likely to go further. As of today, on-demand streaming services, social media, direct mail and online gaming environments were still permitted… Could be discussed in the coming months the total ban of gambling ads, that could impact affiliation marketing as well.
🇺🇦
Ukraine
- Authorities have seized over €17M from a local gambling operator accused of tax evasion. Without disclosing what company is concerned, we know that it created 30 mirrored websites that redirected players deposit offshore.