iGaming Daily

Anaya McDonald (00:03.257)
Hello and welcome to today's episode of the iGaming Daily podcast brought to you in partnership with OptiMove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming industry. Today we're going be looking at some of the key stories from around the world and I'm delighted to be joined by iGaming expert editor Joe Streeter to do that. Martin, it's great to be here. So some big stories we've had come in so yeah really good to dissect them. Thanks for having me on.

Okay, and just before we get into the gambling news and because we, you know, will let's get behind the curtain a little bit and say we've been hastily ripping up our script because there's been some breaking news this morning. But before we get into that, the FA Cup at the weekend. I know you're a big football fan. And how great was it to have no VAR at all in those games? Yeah, well, it was...

It's been especially great for me to be honest as a Man United fan because it meant in the third round against Arsenal with no VAR we kind of saw a throwback. There was a few heads being thrown in and some old school nastiness which would have resulted in about eight red cards had VAR been in play. But I think that was good to see and also not that condone that but it was good. made for a fun affair. did sound a bit like you did condone

It made for a fun match anyway. And then obviously a late Harry Maguire winner about five yards offside. So, yeah, thankful for no VAR. And I do think there's been an extra element of needle in these games because of the lack of VAR. Yeah, I think so. And it's great for fans because you can just celebrate a goal, moment of excitement when the ball goes in or in the case of my team at the weekend against Birmingham.

Maybe didn't go in, but the referees suggested it had gone in, which is also fine. But yeah, I know everyone wants to get decisions right and so on, it just feels a bit more natural, a bit more exciting without VR. It really does. It really does. So but we've got it back for the next round, right? Yeah. Boo, hiss. Yeah. its rules. Go back to the real thing, I guess. But I suppose we should talk about some of the new stories rather than just.

Anaya McDonald (02:26.94)
how much we VAR. So let's start with Entain. From a journalistic point of view, Entain is the gift that just carries on giving. It's story after story after story. From what is fundamentally a reasonably successful company, has lots of individual brands that owns, that do very well, perform very well in markets around the world, yet...

the sort of headline news that comes is always a bit of a surprise. And what we've learned today is...

And what we've now learnt of course is that Gavin Isaacs, the recently appointed CEO, has left. What can you tell us about that Joe? To be honest with you, very little other than it caught me off guard. I think it caught most of us off guard as well. Only a short tenure after quite an extensive search for leadership for a CEO, they appointed Gavin Isaacs.

And then, he departed all of a sudden out the blue this morning after, I think, just around six months in charge. Very interesting. I wouldn't want to speculate on why this happened, but yeah, Stella David takes over on the interim again now and we see where Entain goes from here. Obviously a big 2025 we were anticipating for the operator. So it's going to be...

really fascinating to see how the Entean story continues to unfold. mean, it caught you off guard as well, right? Absolutely. mean, the previous CEO went yet to Nygaard Anderson and apologies to our Danish listeners for the dreadful pronunciation. She left very suddenly as well, but there had at least been speculation building up and there was a clear reason why that happened.

Anaya McDonald (04:33.929)
This was just announcement to the stock exchange and he's gone. It's really interesting to see how long it takes them to find a successor now because it was a long, long time because of all the things that the big issues have had, most notably the fallout from the bribery case and the huge fine that they had there. It meant it wasn't a very attractive job despite being a

massive company offering presumably what's very nice salary. I mean who knows how long it's going to take them to get somebody in place now and that will be a worry to investors. 100 % and his tenure we look back obviously a very short tenure but I think it's fair to say he'll be able to look back from what we know now anyway we'll be able to look back on it with you know definitely some pride because you know we return them to growth.

I think they were on course. think there was a positive outlook for the future and not that there isn't now, but you know, he did have a positive impact on the company and his appointment was also met very well by investors. I think they were happy to see him take the role. yeah, a really interesting one and kind of signals that Entain is going to be a big story in 2025 for sure. Sure.

OK, I know I said at the start we were looking at stories from around the world, but let's stick with something else which has been happening in London, which is a High Court case involving the corporate might of Paddy Power and its parent company Flutter and a disgruntled punter, shall we say. I'm not sure what the legal niceties of this say about it.

But I can fully understand why this particular punter is a little bit upset. Yeah, it's London via Gloucestershire from, and I think the case stems back to gameplay, if you like, from October 2020. yeah, Corinne Durber from Gloucestershire, she was playing an Alice in Wonderland themed game. I think it's called The Wild Hatter. She triggered, I think it's a bonus.

Anaya McDonald (06:57.656)
And this is what's been reported. She triggered, I think it's like a bonus within a bonus, the jackpot bonus. Her screen that she was looking at, said to have implied that she won in excess of a million pounds, just in excess of a million pounds. But her account was credited with 20,000 pounds. And yeah, this is going to the High Court in London, right? So it's gonna, I think it was the monster jackpot that she won or that...

her screen told her that she won, but there was a discrepancy, a reported discrepancy between her screen and the Paddy Power kind of super generator computer that is kind of an interesting prospect that, right? That in Paddy Power headquarters, there's a computer that is randomly generating the wins and deciding how all these iGame and things are going on throughout the country. yeah.

a discrepancy between the two things. Paddy Power in their defense have said that it says in their terms and conditions, 45 pages I think of terms and conditions, that the central computer I think it's called and the central computer server at Paddy Power HQ is what dictates what the victory is, what the actual outcome is. So it's going to be a

a really big case, think. You know, it might seem kind of like a one off type situation, but it could have a real impact on terms and conditions for operators moving forward, not just baddie power. Yeah, I think that's right. mean, firstly, I have some great sympathy for the player involved because on the one hand, go, oh, £20,000 slot win. That's great. The edge is rather taking off it if you were expecting that to be a million pounds.

perhaps a retirement type win rather than just a nice holiday type win. £20,000 never tasted so sour, did it? don't think. No, no. Although, mean, if any bookmaker wants to give me a £20,000 win, I'm sort of there for it as well. But yeah, mean, Paddy Pearl's reliance on their 45 pages of Terms and Conditions, which I mean, I know technically it is down to the consumer to read Terms and Conditions, but...

Anaya McDonald (09:22.245)
Do you do that when you buy things online? Every time actually I go through vigorously. have my, yeah, yeah, every time, no doubt. I've worked with you long enough to suspect that might not be true, But yeah, it'd be interesting because there are a couple of things here. One is that the judge has to look at whether the terms and conditions are reasonable and fair. Are they too complicated for a consumer to understand whether they've done that? Is it?

too easy for you to click through without reading them, for example, which I'm pretty sure it probably is. It is on most websites after all. then that's where the... I'll go to the last one first. The one that's slightly outside the terms and conditions is there's a suggestion that the reason for the technical error might not actually be covered by the terms and conditions whereas some other terms and conditions, some other technical errors.

would be. So there's more than one issue for the judge to decide on if this comes to trial. And we'll see if it comes to trial because there are legal arguments coming on with both sides trying to get various things kicked out of the case and so on at this stage. But the big thing that's going to be, that has the potential to have sort of wider implications in the sector, is if the judge rules that you cannot rely on terms and conditions, complex terms and conditions, lengthy terms and conditions.

to cover this kind of technical error. That would have a knock-on effect for all operators. And that becomes very difficult to defend these things. 100%. And it kind of creates this question about just what iGaming is as well, I think. The barrister of the player, if you like, the barrister of the players.

You know, he said the rules here say that what you see is what you get. You know, the rules are what you see is what you get. Whereas the defendant for Paddy Power have said that basically online slots is wallpaper and what's really going on is on this kind of computer. Yeah. And it just I think it creates a really interesting question about, you know, what I game in is and it's

Anaya McDonald (11:48.136)
going to be, I've no idea how this one plays out to be honest, but yeah, it's a big case for the industry, I think. Yeah, I think so. And also fair play to the barrister representing the punter. He's seen the David versus Goliath potential of this case and he's leaned into it with his very theatrical type words and so on we've seen so far.

It doesn't necessarily mean he's right, of course, but it's easy to get sympathy for the player in these media narrative he can create is, yeah, for sure. Yeah, so it must be fun being a barrister in some of these cases, I guess. Very occasionally. Some of them look really dull. So it's quite exciting. Right, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we will actually do what we promised at the start and look a little bit further afield than the country we're sitting in currently.

All good, Darren. We said everything pretty. I think we were pretty. Yeah. Nothing controversial, right? Yeah. You might want to edit that out because I was congratulating ourselves a little ludicrous bit. Sorry about that. OK. OK. Welcome back to part two of today's iGaming Daily and our global news roundup. So another story that's broken in the last 24 hours. The latest results from Katina Media, the

Swedish affiliate which these days largely focuses its operations in North America. What can you tell us about how things have been going for Katina Joe? Yeah I mean we know about Katina right we know about the kind of streamlining that's been going on at Katina but there were kind of a couple of different angles a couple of interesting nuggets to digest from the Katina results.

We kind of know the trajectory they're on. We know what they're doing. But Manuel Stan, the CEO, did an update about Google updates, about the recent Google updates, and some of the challenges they've had with back-to-back Google updates in November and December just leading to real volatility within search engine optimization. this is a tricky subject to cover.

Anaya McDonald (14:14.773)
Very technical, but I found that fascinating what he said with regards to the quick updates from Google and just how much volatility they caused. I think they scored 5.35 at the end of the period, which was the lowest they've been since they started keeping these records. He assured investors that that score is not indicative of them throughout the whole period. It's a result of

these changes. But yeah, just really underlines, I think, the volatility that can be brought on by Google updates and one for the whole affiliate sector to kind of take heed of and to be aware of. Yeah, I think so. mean, for an investor standpoint, these are quite disappointing results. There's no real way of describing them accurately without saying that.

The Google thing is interesting though, and there's some suggestions from people who work in the search industry that click-through rates from Google are declining fairly rapidly. As Google launches these AI overviews around the world, you can see that for search queries that generate an AI overview as the first result, have a much lower click-through rates now than ones that don't.

That's even more true on paid results, on pay-per-click advertising and so on. So there is a danger coming for all affiliates who rely solely on Search Engine. you've not to be too blunt about it, if you've essentially given Google quite significant control of your business and the success of your business, then it's probably now time to think a little bit again.

But what you do, there plenty of affiliates out there still succeeding, but they tend to be ones who've moved to something that's a bit more product focused. have something that's unique, something that's not just me searching for what's the best price on the 230 at Hayden this afternoon. It's more advanced things, more engaging things, players are going to come back to time and time again without just going through Google for it.

Anaya McDonald (16:42.02)
Interestingly, actually, Katina also stated in these results that they've kind of taken a different approach to AI. kind of, they sold their, or not sold, sorry, bear with me. I wasn't planning on talking about this. Yeah, they're taking a new approach to AI. They confirmed the discontinuation of their AI-based content generation platform, which I think is a long way of saying just

pure AI content, right? Yes. They have said that AI still has a role in what they do and it's still part of their future plans. I think it is for any business. But yeah, interesting. They said it was about that it's more of a business enhancer now for scaling up content output and quality. So I think that indicates to me less less of a reliance on AI there. And that kind of leans into what you were saying before as well. Yeah. I mean, Michael Daly, the

previous CEO was a big advocate for the use of artificial intelligence in the affiliate sector. He came and spoke at one of our digital conferences shortly before he left the business. He was really interesting. was fascinating, but everything he said raised as many questions as it gave answers to. So there's still lot of uncertainty about how effective AI can be in this sector or

Maybe it's more realistic to say a lot of questions about whether or not affiliates have realized how they can use AI effectively to drive that business. Yeah, no, I agree. think it's a there's a place, right? And it's got it's got to find its place. I think it's just not kind of an overreliance. And there was one other element of the kind of Katina. There was one other element of the Katina meter can. Sorry.

There was one other kind of element of these results that I wanted to raise and that was they put forward some interesting points on sweepstakes casinos. Obviously we've seen increased legal action from states across the US on sweepstakes. But they remain bullish on sweepstakes and their prospect and in states that aren't regulated for iGaming as well.

Anaya McDonald (19:10.033)
they are on the cusp of regulating for iGaming. They really pinpointed sweepstakes as an opportunity to get a leg up in those states prior to them regulating and rolling out a full framework for iGaming. So interesting to hear their thoughts on that. Yeah, I know that in the previous update, Manuel Stan, think the current CEO, was very enthusiastic about sweepstakes as a bit of a... to inject some...

sort of.

Let me go again. I know in their previous financial update, the CEO Manuel Stan was very enthusiastic about the potential for sweepstakes to give Catena a new lease of life in areas of states in the US where it's been struggling a bit. And I was a little bit skeptical when he said that because I thought they might be regulated out of existence. there doesn't seem to be will amongst attorney generals in the...

in the non-iGaming states, if you can call them that, to actually do anything about it. yeah, there's a potential for them to continue cashing in for maybe three or four years now until more states come online with regulated iGaming. Yeah, because the trajectory for sweepstakes in these states is up. There's still growth, it's still a profitable product. So yeah, I don't think we're going to see any of the enthusiasm for sweepstakes.

from Katina and from other companies, I don't think we're going to see it dwindle any time soon. No, I don't think so either. Right then, let's look even further afield on something that is out of my comfort zone in terms of knowledge. So over to you on this, Joe. There have been some developments on the integrated resort bill in Thailand. What can you tell us about those?

Anaya McDonald (21:09.657)
well, it was all

Anaya McDonald (21:19.24)
There will be another one. Do I need to read that question?

Anaya McDonald (21:31.613)
Do you want me to... Yeah, well, we'll leave the Middle East. I don't want to there's positive developments in the Middle East. We're going back to war tomorrow, it seems.

Now, are you going to make me pronounce this opposition party in? Great clickbait. Yeah, the integrated resorts bill in Thailand and, you know, we've had political changes in Thailand since this kind of bill got rolling. We've had political changes. There's been a presidential change too. And lots has happened, but it's always felt like the bill has...

had forward momentum, been, it's just been moving forward. But maybe a little bit of a setback now, maybe a little bit of a setback and that is from the opposition.

Go on, Joe, you can do it. You can pronounce this. I have every confidence in you. The Palang Pracarat Party, think. I'm not too sure. You're not going to go with PPP, Yeah, I'm going to go with PPP. Yeah, yeah. So the opposition party in Thailand have put forward a no confidence bill. And at the heart of that no confidence motion or bill, they have cited the integrated resorts bill.

Interestingly, I don't know if anything will come of this. I do anticipate the bill to continue moving forward. But one of the things they did pinpoint was the amount of space allocated at these integrated resorts to gambling essentially and to

Anaya McDonald (23:25.686)
being a casino, you know, these are integrated resorts, they're for entertainment, they're tourist attractions, they are gonna, I'm sure, have concerts and all types of things like that. And they aren't solely for gambling. think that's a big part of how progress has been made. But the opposition party took issue with, I think, 10 % of the integrated resorts being for gambling. I think they wanted it to be less.

So, yeah, a little bit of political back and forth in Thailand. I do believe that Srinivasa's government will continue and will push forward with this bill still. yeah, we've got a story there now and something to keep an eye on. So, yeah, and I think the race there with the UAE and with Japan for

this kind of unofficial race for an integrated resort bill and for casinos in one of the tourist hotspots in that region heats up a little bit of a handicap for Thailand who were otherwise pushing right ahead. Yeah, well, it'll be really interesting to see how things pan out in the legislature in Bangkok.

I know that there's been some polling around that says the public not particularly keen on this casino plan. I think what we know is if it turns up and creates jobs, brings tourists to the area and stuff, people will be keener when it gets up and running. we, know, this is something that's probably, we're talking years in the distance, not.

months, right? Yeah, 100 % years. you know, a matter of years, which is quite exciting. And one of the other stories to kind of uncover with this is where obviously Thailand's very big. I think Bangkok, as you mentioned, is touted as one of the destinations for a casino or for an integrated resort, I should say. But yeah, it's going to be very interesting. There are still some creases to be uncovered. yeah, let's let's keep an eye on that one.

Anaya McDonald (25:46.306)
Yeah, well definitely. I kind of quite like the idea of going on holiday to an integrated resort in Thailand. Which is, my holiday plans may be not a reason to change my policy, still. Joe, thank you very much for joining me today and thank you to all of you for listening and join us again tomorrow for another episode of iGaming Daily.