SBC CIS Weekly Digest: August 22 — 26

Each week, the SBC CIS editorial team looks back at the events of the previous week to highlight the most important and interesting ones for you.

Azerbaijan is changing the rules for collecting royalties from bookmakers, sports organizations in Albania have asked the country’s government to legalize betting, Germany has issued the eighth license for online slots, Setanta Sports to win over the competition in a scandalous bid to broadcast matches of the Ukrainian Premier League, Entain moves into the Southern and Eastern Europe, FanDuel announces the launch of its own sports channel, and an interesting integration from SBC and CoinPoint Group ahead of the SBC Summit Barcelona.

Let’s take a closer look at these events in our weekly digest.

The Council of Ministers of Azerbaijan has made adjustments to the law on the collection of deductions from betting companies, through which the development of the country’s culture and sports is financed.

The decree, signed by Prime Minister Ali Asadov, is intended to regulate the procedure for calculating funds allocated by betting operators to support sports and social projects.

According to the new decree, the share of deductions ranges from 1% to 2.5% of the operator’s annual turnover, depending on the dynamics of revenue indicators

A coalition of Albanian sports organizations has asked the government to legalize and start regulating sports betting in the country, arguing that this can bring the necessary revenue to the state.

Gambling in Albania has been banned since January 2019. Thousands of betting shops  across the country had to be closed down. Online casinos and gambling were also banned, with the exception of a few operators who were given special permits.

The letter, signed by several sports federations and the Olympic Committee, contains a request to legalize only the sports betting vertical, introduce open and transparent market regulations, and direct part of the profits to support athletes in the country.

Setanta Sports has become the official broadcaster of the Ukrainian Premier League (UPL). The duration of the contract is 3 seasons, the amount is close to 16.2 million dollars.

According to the agreement, the championship matches will be available on Setanta Sports cable channels: at least four matches of each round will be broadcast live, and the rest will be available to watch on the record.

In addition, Setanta Sports will broadcast all matches on the OTT platform as well as on its Youtube channel.

According to Ukrainian media, five clubs opposed this deal and refused to transfer their media rights to Setanta.

Dynamo Kyiv, Dnipro-1, Zorya and Metalist announced that they plan to broadcast their home matches via 1 + 1 media holding, and Rukh on their own TV channel and YouTube.

As a result of this conflict situation, the Setanta film crew was not allowed by Zorya and Rukh to the matches of the first round of the UPL against Vorskla and Metallist, respectively. 

The editors of SBC CIS are following further developments around the rights to broadcast football matches of the Ukrainian Premier League and will definitely inform you of new details of this story.

Entain Plc has announced its plans to become the leading bookmaker in Central and Eastern Europe with the launch of the new Entain CEE venture. The company also announced that it will acquire a majority stake in the leading Croatian betting group SuperSport for 600 million euros.

As part of the deal, Entain will acquire a 75% stake in SuperSport from Czech investment fund EMMA Capital, which subsequently became a partner in the launch of Entain CEE.

In Germany, the eighth online slots license was issued to Jokerstar. The license will cover the territory of Saxony-Anhalt, where the national gambling regulator in Germany is located.

Jokerstar was founded in 2021 and is owned by Kling Automaten, which operates land-based arcades in Germany.

The FanDuel Group, part of Flutter Entertainment, has announced its intention to launch FanDuel TV, which will include a cable TV network as well as a new OTT platform known as FanDuel+.

The launch is scheduled for September this year. FanDuel TV will be the first hybrid TV platform dedicated to sports betting.

SBC and CoinPoint Group have signed a strategic partnership agreement ahead of the world’s leading sports betting and gambling event, SBC Barcelona 2022, which will be held at Fira Barcelona de Montjuïc from 20 to 22 September.

CoinPoint’s mission is to create an accessible cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem that can help companies understand the strategic opportunities of Web 3.0.

SBC, in turn, will provide a platform for CoinPoint to meet thousands of betting and iGaming professionals. Exclusively for the summit attendees, CoinPoint is doing an event called The Catalonian Metaverse & Web 3.0 Gaming.

We remind you that tickets for the SBC Summit Barcelona 2022 can be purchased by clicking on this link.

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