Acquisitions, lockdowns and Safer Gambling Week: The week in numbers

Each week, CasinoBeats breaks down the numbers behind some of the industry’s most interesting stories. Today, we feature a Safer Gambling Week Pledge, Philadelphia shutdown, acquisitions and the second All-Index Annual Report.

The All-In Diversity Project has reported a boost in female executives and a drop in board representation, as the not-for-profit initiative publishes its second annual study of the sector’s workforce.

The All-Index Annual Report 2019 features data supplied by 26 organisations, which represent over 100 global brands, and indicates a near 50:50 employee split overall, with 46.7 per cent of the 125,697 staff members identified as women.

Detailing the findings of the study, the firm says that the discoveries support some, but debunk other, assumptions about industry stereotypes, and highlight initiatives that help support and promote workplace diversity and inclusion.

This year’s report indicated that, of those organisations that participated, females makes up 41 per cent of executive teams, however, if you ascend to board level that representation has dropped 5.5 per cent from 28 per cent to 22.5 per cent.

The Spelinspektionen has debuted a new campaign that is designed to drive further awareness of the Spelpaus self-exclusion scheme.

Initially running until mid-January, the initiative will consist of 13 different messages which will predominantly be shown via banners across a range of online platforms.

This follows on from a government-commissioned campaign that was rolled out during the summer across television, websites and social media, which aimed to ‘significantly increase the public’s knowledge about the possibility of being banned from gambling’.

According to the regulator, the first campaign was considered to be successful in raising awareness of the Spelpaus.se initiative, which it says sees approximately 58,000 currently suspended from gambling.

100,000

The Betting and Gaming Council has marked the beginning of Safer Gambling Week by asserting that the industry is committed to safer gambling “not for one week but for all year round”.

The significance of the event, which gets underway today and runs until Wednesday 25 November, will not be undiminished by the latest lockdowns, says the group.

Hundreds of betting shops in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland will be forced to keep their doors closed during the week, however, over 100,000 staff at more than 9,000 gambling venues and online sites are said to be participating.

SGW’s ‘Let’s Talk About Safer Gambling’ is to feature prominently online and in venues which have escaped COVID restrictions, with betting shops, casinos and online operators, arcades and bingo companies also getting involved to promote the many tools available to help promote safer gambling.

Commercial gaming revenue across the US finished up at $9.04bn during 2020’s third quarter, a figure which represents 81 per cent of the industry’s pre-COVID levels recorded in the same period a year earlier, according to the American Gaming Association’s Commercial Gaming Revenue Tracker.

Despite Q3 revenue being up 294 per cent from the second quarter lows, driven by pandemic-driven, mandatory closures, health and safety measures currently in place, including social distancing and capacity restrictions, have contributed to the recovery lagging behind the country’s broader economic recovery.

Gaming revenue is down 36.5 per cent year-over-year during the first nine months of 2020, compared to the US GDP’s three per cent decline across the same period.

During the July – September reporting period more than 100 casinos reopened, with 902 (90.8 per cent of the total) commercial and tribal venues operational by the end of the period, compared to 800 (80.8 per cent) at the start of July.

149.1

Game Account Network has unveiled a €149.1m definitive purchase agreement to acquire Coolbet, which has been approved by its board of directors and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2021.

Subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, the deal will leverage the latter’s proprietary sports betting technology, which is anticipated to be integrated into GAN’s turnkey technology solutions for launch in the US real money igaming market by the second half of 2021.

The acquisition, which is expected to be immediately accretive, will see GAN welcome over 175 global employees and more than 84,000 active customers.

The Competition and Markets Authority in the United Kingdom has cleared Evolution’s impending acquisition of NetEnt, almost two months after launching an investigation to analyse if the transaction would lessen the competition in the region’s igaming market.

The competition regulator officially announced the launch of its merger inquiry by notice to those concerned in September, before inviting comments on the purchase by any interested party.

Those comments needed to be provided before the invitation closed on October 5, following which the CMA would proceed to the analysis stage of phase one before reaching a decision on whether to enter phase two or close the inquiry by November 16.

Philadelphia’s Rivers Casino is to close its doors until at least the first day of next year, after the Pennsylvanian city published its ‘Safer at Home’ restrictions.

In response to rising COVID-19 cases in Philadelphia, the city and Department of Public Health have announced changes to restrictions on businesses, events and gatherings, and other activities to help flatten the epidemic curve, prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed, and reduce the number of COVID-19 deaths.

The ‘Safer at Home’ restrictions come into effect on November 20, 2020 until January 1, 2021. It is warned that an extension of these and/or the implementation of additional restrictions is possible, depending on trends in the spread of coronavirus across the region.

As a result of the mandated order, Rivers Casino Philadelphia, the sole land-based gaming entity currently within city limits, will be forced to shut down its operation once more.

NEWS SOURCE : CASINO BEATS