The growing U.S. sportsbook industry is starting to learn lessons other operators had to learn years ago. Several books had to fight glitches and downtime during Super Bowl LV, unable to handle the peak-day load of volume.

BetMGM, FanDuel, DraftKings, BetRivers and Barstool Sportsbook each had their own flavor of problems on the big Sunday. Many of the problems seem to have originated with Kambi, who suggested the problem was with a high volume on a specific player prop.

“This specific problem was quickly identified and rectified ahead of kick-off, at which point Kambi processed the highest ever bet volumes in its history,” the spokesperson said. “Beyond this specific issue, all systems responded within acceptable performance limits.”

That helps explain some of the issues faced by DraftKings, BetRivers and Barstool, but not the others. Flutter’s FanDuel reported an outage in Michigan and Illinois affecting both logins and wagers, and BetMGM tweeted their own issues:

This is a Guest Contribution by Emily Haruko Leeb. Visit her site at www.emilyleeb.com to know more.

One of the ways we can enhance performance, increase productivity and our company’s bottom line is through coaching in the workplace. Coaching in the workplace allows individuals to optimize their individual performance by becoming empowered, refining their skillsets and communication and staying committed to an engaged and aligned culture. Coaching, when done effectively, brings out the best in people. It aligns their commitments with their actions, and their actions with their words.

Company culture plays such a significant role in a company’s successes and failures. It’s a make or break variable, yet it has little to do with the actual nature of the business and everything to do with the people – how they communicate and how they perform.

If we do not consciously create a company culture, the company culture develops organically.

This article is a guest contribution from Nick Hill, Executive Director of PremierConsultingGambling and a member of the Bitcoin Association. This article originally appeared on CoinGeek. 

Since the dawn of mobile gambling, gaming has gone from strength to strength. Player numbers around the world have soared in recent years, fueled by the convenience and flexibility of online options. Compared to the pre-mobile days of exclusively physical, in-person gaming, the industry has already benefited hugely from advancing technologies.

Yet even still, technological barriers exist within the gaming sector that holds back progress. Trust and transparency remain a significant issue for some players, and for operators. Compliance with the licensing standards set by regulators and lawmakers pose their own problems for operators to solve. The gaming experience is reliant on often centralised systems, in themselves vulnerable to manipulation and hacking.

This is where blockchain comes in. Blockchain is already shaping the future of gaming, and is set to be the next big technology to ring sweeping changes through the sector—for the better. But why does gaming need blockchain, and what are the advantages of the technology for both operators and players?

With both Manchester clubs in action, the fifth round of the F.A. Cup features some of the strongest teams in the country. It will also see some of this season’s minnows attempt to cause a ‘Cupset’ and progress to the quarter-finals of a competition that can be a lifeline to smaller teams.

Who will win and who will crash out at the last 16 stage? Let’s take a look in our crystal ball and pick some winners.

Manchester United vs. West Ham United (Tuesday, 7.30pm GMT kick-off)

This could be a cup classic. United host West Ham in what many will tell you is a home banker but in actual fact is anything but.

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

Just about every team sport on the planet concludes its season with its biggest event. The 2020 NFL season, for example, just concluded Sunday with Super Bowl 55. NASCAR handles things differently as it stages its biggest event to kick off the new season and that’s the Daytona 500. The 63rd running of the Great American Race is Sunday at 2:30 p.m. ET from Daytona International Speedway on the east coast of Florida. There will be limited fans (around 30,000) allowed. It’s 200 laps around the 2.5-mile track.

One big storyline at this year’s race is who isn’t in it: Seven-time points champion Jimmie Johnson, who retired as a full-time competitor after last season. He won this race twice, in 2006 and 2013.

The clear-cut favorite (if there is such a thing in a NASCAR race), is two-time defending champion Denny Hamlin at +700. The 2019 race won by Hamlin was the last at the track with restrictor plates, and last year’s race was postponed by a day due to rain. Hamlin edged out Ryan Blaney by 0.014 seconds to become the first repeat winner since Sterling Marlin in 1995.

Online gambling operator Kindred Group has gone public with the share of revenue it derives from ‘harmful gambling’ by its high-risk players, while explaining its efforts to eventually reduce this share to zero. 

Last Friday, Kindred announced that while around 98% of customers of its various online brands were deemed to gamble responsibly, the company still derived 4.31% of its Q4 2020 revenue from so-called ‘high-risk’ players. Kindred said it would continue to release such statistics in future as it strives to reduce the percentage to zero by 2023.

Kindred released stats showing that Q4’s ‘high-risk’ revenue rate was a modest improvement from 4.39% in Q3 and the 4.72% in Q2, but represented a significant gain from the 3.88% in Q1. The company said Q4 showed a 75.7% improvement in the share of detected ‘high-risk’ customers who changed their behavior after the company intervened in response to signs of excessive play. 

The stats show more significant decreases in ‘low-risk’ and ‘medium-risk’ revenue share, with a corresponding rise in the ‘social’ category, suggesting Kindred’s responsible gambling tools have a far greater impact on individuals who already possess the personal tools needed to keep their gambling in check.