DAZN running out of patience
DAZN-LFP new low, Netherlands tax high, predictions market &Co
Good morning, on Gaming&Co today:
No distance left to run: has DAZN had it with French football?
Dutch flyers: iGaming boost to Netherlands gambling taxes
Who’d have predicted: legal status of Kalshi, Robinhood looking good
News shorts: Entain Australia, Tipico
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DAZN’s end zone?
Dispute between the streaming giant and French football league reaches a new low
Cutting its losses: DAZN could be about to bring its Ligue 1 TV rights agreement to an abrupt end by cancelling its contract with France’s Ligue de Football Professional as early as the end of this season as it runs out of patience with French football, while betting industry contacts have told Gaming&Co that the situation has also been a major boon for Whatsapp and Telegram bookmakers and affiliates.
RMC Sport reported last week that the streaming giant continues to be deeply unhappy about its treatment at the hands of LFP. Having acquired the rights to Ligue 1 this season for around €375m per year until 2029, DAZN withheld a €35m payment in February and is threatening to withhold payment of a further €75m due this month.
New low: DAZN and LFP are not commenting publicly on this latest twist, but it marks another low in the dealings between the two organisations. DAZN believes LFP has not done enough to prevent widespread piracy of Ligue 1 games and is unhappy at French football clubs for not giving it access to star players and for prioritising in-house content.
Filtering though at all levels
The headlines focus on TV rights, but for France’s OSB operators, the impact of DAZN’s lack of popularity is also being felt through lower visibility and appeal for Ligue 1 betting markets.
One executive told G&Co: “Whatsapp and Telegram are already fertile platforms for illegal bookmakers and affiliates and pirate streams continue to act as major affiliates for unregulated operators targeting France”.
While there has been heightened interest in La Liga or Premier League markets among regulated operators as a result, they worry about the long-term effects of these trends on their “bread and butter French markets”. The contact added that the ongoing “turmoil continues to impact the volumes recorded by the country’s legal sportsbooks".
Mis-sold: DAZN believes it was sold the rights on a false prospectus, notably over the level of collaboration it could expect from LFP and Ligue 1 clubs over privacy and media access. According to RMC Sport, it is calling for payments to be graded and determined by the cooperation it receives from French clubs over access to players and how much progress is made by LFP in the fight against piracy.
Subscriber numbers to DAZN’s Ligue 1 offering are understood to hover around the 500,000 mark, although they are not confirmed, but even then they are still far from the 1,5 million DAZN was hoping to recruit at the start of the season. DAZN has also partnered with Betconstruct to launch DAZN Bet in France, although timings remain uncertain and will not happen if it cancels its Ligue 1 contract.
France’s leading bookmakers such as FDJ United and Betclic have announced strong results in recent months, the Autorité Nationale des Jeux’s 2024 report is expected in the next few weeks.
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Online gambling boosts Netherlands gambling tax to €1bn
Rise of digital offerings since 2021 provides tax boost to Dutch coffers
Dutch flyers: According to its Central Bureau of Statistics, Dutch operators played a key role in enabling a record €1bn in gambling tax revenues in 2024. The statistics are based on provisional figures from the government, but the CBS said “never before has the revenue from gambling tax been so high”.
The country’s legalisation of online gambling in Oct 2021 was a driving force behind the record revenues, which have risen from €300m in 2021 to €1bn this year across both online and land-based activities. The rise followed a drop in casino-related taxes in 2020-21 due to the pandemic.
The Netherlands’ Tax and Customs Administration noted that around €400m of the total figure came from digital operators and that online GGR had risen from €2.5bn in 2021 to €4.4bn in 2023.
The gambling tax rate has risen to 30.5% of GGR compared to 30.1% in 2019 and following the regulation of iGaming it dropped temporarily to 29% throughout 2022. From January 2025 the rate has increased to 34.2% and will reach 37.8% in 2026.
Illegal emergency: The Dutch regulator, the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), has said it has intensified its supervision of illegal gambling apps and removed 20 apps from the app stores since the start of 2025. The KSA said the “problem is becoming increasingly urgent” and the “websites are also often accessible to minors, which makes the situation even more worrying”.
Advertised via social media, illegal operators also display logos of licensed providers or promote ‘standard’ games, but after “downloading them (they link) to illegal gambling websites”, said KSA.
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Prediction markets take centre stage
Politics and key appointments point to positive outcomes for likes of Kalshi and Robinhood
Loud and proud: The analysts JMP have said that prediction markets have become “too loud to ignore” following the US election-fuelled rise to prominence of leading operators like Kalshi, PredictIt, Polymarket and Robinhood.
Legal eagles: Potentially they could create new revenue and cross-sell opportunities, but “the bevy of legal questions” is currently holding back operators such as FanDuel and Draftkings from launching their own brands of prediction markets.
The regulator of the vertical, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), is set to hold a roundtable on 30 April that is expected to provide clarity around on whether prediction markets are outcomes or sports betting products.
If they are judged to be outcomes, they will be allowed to operate on a federal level, which US sportsbooks cannot do currently.
C&D mania: Maryland, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, and Nevada have all issued cease-and-desist letters to Kalshi and other exchanges, but JMP said that “on a federal level it appears the CFTC ruling could be leaning in a direction of allowing prediction markets”.
Key execs: This is because Brian Quintenz, a board member of Kalshi, has been nominated to be the next chair of the CFTC, and was previously an advisory council member of Crypto.com. In addition, Donald Trump Jr. is a strategic advisor to Kalshi and “the signs are pointing to a positive ruling”, which would pave the way for sports betting companies to build an offering and launch by signing B2B partnership deals with the likes of Kalshi.
Former American Gaming Association executive Sara Slane has also joined Kalshi, as Head of Corporate Development. She will lead the group’s public and government relations and third-party integration projects.
News shorts
According to the Australian Financial Review, Entain Australia has been guilty of “serious and systemic” compliance failures and refusing to enquire about how players were able to finance gambling habits worth millions of dollars.
Australia’s anti-money laundering enforcement body Austrac said the company failed to undertake any checks on 17 customers, “did not develop and maintain” a compliant AML program and failed to identify and assess the risks it faced.
One customer deposited more than €2.2m between 2015 and 2022 and only provided a bank statement in 2021 claiming he had received €81,000 from a property sale.
Another customer wagered €11m between 2015 and 2022. The company did not check his identity, despite him sharing a name with a convicted drug trafficker.
Lachlan Fitt and Cameron Rodger, respectively CEO-CFO of Entain Aus and MD of Entain NZ recently left the company in the wake of the scandal.
Major German betting group Tipico has said it will no longer work with suppliers that provide their games to illegal operators targeting the German market. The news comes as groups like Evolution come under scrutiny from the UK Gambling Commission for providing their products to unregulated operators in the UK.
Tipico said it will expand its trusted partner programme to payment firms and affiliates. The following suppliers have been approved by Tipico: Apparat, Games Global, Greentube, Hölle Games, Merkur, Play’n Go, and Zeal.
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