French iGaming holds its breath as politics plays out
France politics and iGaming, Kindred in-house in Estonia, iGaming salary survey…
Good morning, on Gaming & Co today:
Watching and waiting: French iGaming holds it breath as politics plays out
Roll out: Kindred Group launches in-house platform in Estonia
iGaming salary survey: no more remote
First of many? Robinhood eyes OSB move
Spain’s DGOJ sets limits
News shorts: Betsson, Indonesia, GomaUX
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French gambling stakeholders watch and wait
iCasino working committees are expected to continue, but government censure leads to more uncertainty
Watching and waiting: France’s online gambling sector is waiting to see who President Macron will appoint following Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s resignation yesterday after his government became the first to lose a confidence motion since 1962. The motion of censure was initiated by the hard left party La France Insoumise with support from the hard right Rassemblement National following their rejection of the country’s 2025 budget.
Speaking on French TV yesterday, Macron, who is said to have been on the lookout for a new PM since mid-November, said he will appoint a successor to Barnier within days.
Void avoidance: He will also want to avoid the three-month summer period when the country did not have a government following the snap legislative elections he called. Should a new government be appointed quickly, MPs and lawmakers have until 11 Dec to submit a new budget, although that timeline is considered unlikely.
In that case, the 2024 budget will be adopted by special law and a 2025 text will be worked on in the early months of next year.
No. New. Taxes: The prospect of applying last year’s budget to the country will at least mean that online sports betting and poker operators will avoid the tax hikes that Barnier’s budget had planned for them. A new budget would also enable them to lobby for no rises in taxes and for the regulation of online casino.
On that last topic, industry sources told Gaming&Co that the working committees studying the project are expected to continue, but it was still too early to know how they would be impacted by this week's political events. However, a left wing-led government would not be a promising prospect.
Mad world: While France is in massive need of tax revenues to plug its public debt and looked to online casino to generate €1bn, but instability is likely to be an ongoing feature of its politics until at least next summer – the earliest point at which it can hold new elections.
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Kindred launches new sportsbook platform in Estonia
FDJ’s European sportsbook rolls out in-house platform to build “highly scalable model”
Market testing: Kindred Group has launched its Kindred Sportsbook Platform (KSP) with its flagship Unibet brand in Estonia. The group, whose betting offering has been powered by Kambi since it was spun out of Unibet in 2014, has been developing the new platform as part of its plans to operate on a proprietary platform, expand its product portfolio and “achieve full end-to-end control over its products”.
KSP was also a key driver in Française des Jeux deciding to acquire Kindred.
As part of the launch, Estonian players were given tailored profit boosts and other rewards tied to local teams and events such as a EuroBasket game and an exhibition tennis event – both held at the Tallinn Unibet Arena.
Bad influence: Kindred will adapt to Estonia’s advertising regulations. In common with regulations in France, they prohibit influencer-led marketing campaigns.
The group already offers horse racing via KSP and has also launched a native iOS app for Estonia and “advanced features like Bet Builder”. It added that “KSP is designed to scale across all Kindred markets”.
Salary survey: full-time and remote positions out…
… as hybrid roles become the new norm
New normal: Hybrid work is now the norm, according to the iGamingBusiness-Pentasia Salary Survey (Pentasia parent company Conexus Group is a Gaming&Co sponsor), with companies insisting on full-time office work facing challenges in attracting talent.
Key findings include:
Fully remote roles are less common outside of tech and data positions. While tech candidates prefer fully remote options, other departments are moving to hybrid models, requiring proximity to an office.
Salaries have stabilised for the past two years, aligning more closely with inflation. Last year’s increase of 3.9% and 2024’s 3.3% mark a departure from the significant salary growth witnessed between 2020 and 2022, a period defined by the pandemic’s impact.
Demand for data and tech talent remains strong, especially for frontend developers, BI developers and data scientists. Skills in web3, crypto and data algorithms are particularly sought after.
Succession planning and retention are critical challenges for igaming companies, as they struggle to maintain leadership continuity and keep top talent engaged.
Brazil’s job market is flooded with applicants, creating a large talent pool. However, this has created challenges in identifying top talent and local agency screening processes need refinement as applications remain high.
Trading giant eyes OSB move
Robinhood “keenly looking” at moving into OSB space, says CEO
Instant impact: The impact of trading giant Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev telling investors that it is “keenly looking" at the sports betting space was felt immediately as US sports betting stocks dropped 3% after the news came out.
Tenev made the comment during the group’s investor day this week and the news follows the huge impact that Kalshi and Polymarket have made since they launched political betting markets on the US presidential election.
Polymarket was recently ordered to stop operating in France, but the potential arrival of major trading platforms in US, and, potentially in European online betting could have major ramifications.
For all the excitement, gambling stocks recovered during trading and building out a sports betting product was “incredibly hard to start from scratch”, said the analysts at JMP.
Captain sensible: “A more sensible path would be setting up a betting exchange” that would “avoid the risks associated with traditional sports betting”, although the situation could unfold like that of sports merchandise giant Fanatics, which launched in the US by acquiring Pointsbet. JMP cited “M&A (as) the only real viable option” for Robinhood.
Limited options: Robinhood has a key advantage in having “significantly more funds through its investing platform compared to FanDuel (or) DraftKings”, but it would still need technology and product and “the acquisition of a sub-scale operator would still require massive investment (and time), while mid-scale companies remain limited”, added JMP.
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Spain to introduce deposit limits
Setting limits: Spanish regulator Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego is set to introduce a system that will allow players to set themselves a daily or weekly deposit limit, with the aim of strengthening player protection and promoting responsible gambling.
Operators will have to validate the limits before authorising any deposits, and if a player exceeds his limit, the platform will automatically block him.
The system will be managed by DGOJ, record transactions in real time, store historical data and will have the capacity to process 180 million requests per year.
Guaranteeing minimum availability of 95%, it promises to respond to critical incidents in less than four hours.
News shorts
Betsson has called for calm as a bill that seeks to prohibit advertising across all media platforms and public spaces in Argentina is being debated. The Swedish group told SBC News: “A robust licensing system and effective regulations ensure a sustainable balance between public concerns and the benefits of the industry. Blanket bans, however, have historically not achieved these objectives and often lead to unintended consequences.”
Indonesian lawmakers blocked 380,000 online gambling sites in October with the help of AI as part of the new government’s plan to stamp out illegal online gambling. The authorities have also enlisted special cyber-patrols to detect sites that contain gambling content.
Further reading: Goma Gaming (a Gaming&Co sponsor) was interviewed by SBC News on why its flagship GomaUX product is a game-changer for online sportsbooks wanting to provide a truly modern UX and UI to their players.
Contact
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