SBC CIS Weekly Digest: 07 — 11 November

Each week, SBC CIS editors look back at the events of the previous week to highlight the most interesting and resonant ones for you.

SBC celebrates the best of the best in the LatAm region, gambling markets in Africa are set on a growth trajectory, TikTok and Sportsbet want young Australians to get hooked on sports betting, Fulham F.C. ditches its shady CFD trading sponsor, 3 Oaks Gaming keeps expanding the number of iGaming platforms offering their content and casinos in Cyprus enjoy some solid GGR growth in 2022.

Read about these news in detail in our digest below.

SBC Awards Latinoamerica recognizes regional leaders in betting and gambling. 

This year’s winners were announced at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. As usual, the nominees were divided into several categories: Operators, Affiliates and Media, Suppliers, Payments and Compliance.

Among the companies that celebrated their victory at the SBC Awards Latinoamérica were Apuesta Total, Betcris, Betsson Group, Better Collective, Evolution, Kaizen Gaming and Sportradar Group.

Kaizen Gaming took home the bookmaker of the year award, while Betsson Group was named the casino operator of the year. In other operator categories, an independent jury selected EstrelaBet as the rising star and Betmotion as the best bingo and lotto operator.

Marketing Campaign Award went to Apuesta Total, while Betcris was named the best in the Sponsorship of the Year category. Better Collective and iGamingNuts took home the Sports/Media & Casino Partner of the Year awards, while Futbol Sites (Playmaker) took silver in the same category.

BetConstruct was named the Sportsbook Provider of the Year, Genius Sports won the award for sports data and live betting products, and Digitain was crowned as the Esports Provider of the Year.

Paysafe Group received the Payment Solution & Innovation of the Year award, while Veriff was awarded Compliance Partner of the Year/Vendor of the Year in the Payments & Compliance category.

Evolution excelled in the vendor section, winning both Casino & iGaming Vendor of the Year and Industry Innovation of the Year. Sportradar Group won two awards, winning both Platform Supplier of the Year and Acquisition and Retention Partner.

The African gambling market is on its way to exceed $5.6 billion by 2030.

Experts note that in 2021 the African gambling market reached $3 billion. Analysts believe that the average annual growth rate of the market over the decade will be 7%. This forecast is based on the popularity of gaming apps and smartphone penetration.

Africa has the youngest population in the world, with about 60% of the population under 25, and gambling is of great interest to the younger generation in the region. According to a 2019 GeoPoll survey, about 54% of young people aged 17–35 in sub-Saharan Africa bet on sports.

The value of the casino segment in 2021 was almost $2 billion. It is expected that by 2030 it will grow to $3.5 billion due to the legalization of casinos in many African countries.

South Africa keeps its dominant position throughout the African continent as its market is estimated at $2.5 billion. It is projected to grow over 5x times in just 8 years.

TikTok has allowed betting company Sportsbet to run ads on its platform. Although the video sharing platform has numerous times in the past vowed to ban any form of gambling advertising, betting on sports, after all, is perceived by many as a game of skill and therefore it’s hard to resist sucking in additional sweet betting dollars, especially when there’s a FIFA World Cup ahead. So TikTok has decided to make an exception for Sportsbet as part of a closed pilot project. 

The conditions for the pilot put forward by TikTok are the following — Sportsbet can only market their offering to users from Australia, and only to those who are over 21 years old, each ad should contain the information about the risks associated with betting on sports and users should be given the option to refuse getting such ads if they would wish so. 

According to Digital 2022 Australia, TikTok’s advertising reach is over 7 million Australians aged 18 and over. And according to the Australian Center for Gambling Research, residents of the country lost $25 billion due to gambling between 2018 and 2019. The per capita loss is the highest in the world.

Fulham F.C., a strong English Premier League contender, has terminated its partnership with Titan Capital Markets due to a questionable nature of its business, which is CFD trading firm.

The company declared itself an official CFD trading partner of the football club in September, but Fulham have now cut ties after a report by The Athletic came out claiming that the company was being investigated by the Australian authorities for licensing issues.

3 Oaks Gaming, an iGaming content distributor, has launched its portfolio of slot games through CasinoEngine, a  solution offered by the EveryMatrix platform. This deal made possible for the iGaming service provider content to become available on the CasinoEngine network.

This partnership will strengthen CasinoEngine’s gaming offerings. Its customers, which include some of the top iGaming brands in the world, now gained access to the impressive 3 Oaks Gaming content, which has made a name for itself in the online slots industry due to its addictive nature and high-quality graphics.

Casino business is on the rise again in Cyprus. The revenue is reported to be up 17%. 

GGR seems to be rebounding after the pandemic for casinos in Cyprus reaching 25.1 million Euros in the third quarter of 2022. The growth was 17.3% compared to the same period last year, when revenue reached 21.4 million Euros.

The turnover of slot machines during this period reached 350.7 million Euros, an increase of 94.4 million Euros compared to the third quarter of 2021. Revenue from slot machines reached 5.1% of sales. 

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