GVC Holdings PLC (LSE: GVC), the global sports betting and gaming group, today reports trading for the period from 1 January to 31 March 2020 (“Q1”) and provides a further update on the impact of COVID-19 and the mitigating actions being taken.  This follows the Group’s previous announcements of 16 and 17 March 2020.

Summary

• GVC started the year well, with Group net gaming revenue (“NGR”) +1% and Online NGR up +19%cc1 in the first quarter

• However, the closure of retail outlets and the cancellation of sports events significantly reduced revenue from mid-March

The world’s economy has been warped immeasurably by the global outbreak of COVID-19, businesses have suffered, and people’s day-to-day lives have changed beyond belief.

There are many oddities that have arisen during these difficult times, some that will shape the way we live for many months and years to come and some that will only last for the duration of these troubling times. 

Whilst it’s certainly not even close to being one of the hardest-hitting issues the general public are faced with right now, the lack of live sport, and by extension live sports betting, has come as a shock to the system to so many that rely on it as their main form of entertainment.

Without the allure of the Premier League football, horse racing, boxing and other live sporting staples, people across the United Kingdom are turning to other forms of betting in order to keep themselves occupied during lockdown.

On April 27, at the largest online meeting in the betting and gaming industry, the emergency linked to Covid-19 will be discussed

Liverpool, 3 April 2020 – Giovanni Garrisi, CEO of Stanleybet and Magellan Robotech, will partecipate in the SBC Digital Summit, the largest online event designed to inspire the betting and gaming industry during turbulent times, especially with COVID-19 continuing to spread with huge impact on all our businesses. To address the state of our industry, SBC has gathered the very best industry experts and thought leaders to share their views and discuss what tools we can use and look at the opportunities ahead of us. The intervention of Dr. Garrisi is scheduled for the first day of the event, Monday 27 April, from 12 to 12.40 (UK time), within the panel “An opportunity to revisit the omni-channel approach?”. The other important speakers who will participate in the same appointment will be: Fabio Schiavolin (CEO Snaitech), Per Widerstrom (CEO Fortuna Group) and Johnny Hartnett (CEO SuperBet).

How can companies with large retail estates manage their human resources effectively during the COVID-19 outbreak? Can they be redeployed to online services or is it a case of ‘furloughing’ them until shops can re-open? Does this enforced stoppage allow us to revisit the omni-channel experience?

These are the themes on which the panel will focus, certainly one of the highlights of the entire Summit.

• Alessandro Fried: “An opportunity for bookmakers to diversify srategies and overcome over-reliance on sportsbook”

With the novel coronavirus disrupting the sporting calendar and putting on hold the sportsbook industry, leading platform provider BtoBet has put in place and launched a strategy in order to aid bookmakers during this trying time. The strategy aims to assist sportsbook operators to retain their current fold of players, shifting their engagement from pure betting on sports events to other alternative verticals mitigating and avoiding a downfall in revenue.

Amongst other aspects the strategy involves the introduction of special content for those bookmakers making use of the BtoBet services, including:

• a daily selection of the most important horse-racing events,

Betting in face of COVID-19 – an online conference dedicated to crisis management of the European betting business during the pandemic, will take place on April 17. Top experts of the industry will share their experience and the most successful cases of fighting crisis on the global market.

Event program is still under development, but first three speakers of Betting in face of COVID-19 Europe are on board.

First speakers of the online conference and presentations

The founder of Brand Architects Harry Lang will make a presentation “Online betting during the pandemic: current market state, alternative betting lines and further development”. Expert provided his marketing services for such gambling brands as Pinnacle, bwin, Genting Bet, Party Casino, bwin Casino, WMS Jackpot Party, Pinnacle Casino, Grosvenor Casino, Genting Casino, Absolute Poker, Party Poker, Foxy Bingo, Mecca Bingo, Cheeky Bingo, Pinnacle eSports, CS:GO Empire and Puntt.gg.

Real money online poker coming to Italian players in April 2020

partypoker has obtained a gaming license to operate in the Italian poker market.

Effective April 1, 2020, the license permits partypoker to offer real money online poker games to players in Italy.

The license agreement will see some of partypoker’s global tournament titles brought to the Italian market from April 1, after an absence of four years.

Legendary Spanish gaming provider plays its part during testing times

Madrid, 02nd April 2020 – The R. Franco Group, Spain’s most established gaming company, has made an initial donation of 13,000 reusable masks across Spain as part of the nation’s ongoing fight against Covid-19.

Donations are planned across the temporary hospital currently opened at IFEMA, Madrid’s equivalent to Excel London, to the Military Emergencies Unit, which is a branch of the Spanish army, as well as several units of the police and residences for elderly people.

As a key stakeholder in the nation’s future, the R. Franco Group wishes to contribute to the support of its country in these unprecedented circumstances.

Legendary Spanish gaming provider plays its part during testing times

Madrid, 02nd April 2020 – The R. Franco Group, Spain’s most established gaming company, has made an initial donation of 13,000 reusable masks across Spain as part of the nation’s ongoing fight against Covid-19.

Donations are planned across the temporary hospital currently opened at IFEMA, Madrid’s equivalent to Excel London, to the Military Emergencies Unit, which is a branch of the Spanish army, as well as several units of the police and residences for elderly people.

As a key stakeholder in the nation’s future, the R. Franco Group wishes to contribute to the support of its country in these unprecedented circumstances.

Liverpool, 1 April 2020 – The findings of a study commissioned by the Stanley Board to the Robotics Division of the Liverpool Group on the likely trends of the Covid-19 pandemic in the coming weeks, were disclosed and released to all Stanley affiliates in Europe. The Robotics Division is the same that created humanoid robot Alicia, which utiizes the most advanced techniques in giving life to virtual products. The virus is dealt with by a mathematical model that interprets the pandemic as if were spread by a swarm of hostile robots. Each individual virus is looked at as if it were a single nano-robot, and its effects are analyzed in relation to its movements, by the same techniques of logistic prediction that are applied to gauge the simultaneous movement of millions of very low cooperation level software drones (swarms). It is an approach that was fine-tuned for the first time in the world at Magellan Robotech with respect to specialized software simulating the movements of virtual entities, in that case characterized by a high cooperation level. An ad hoc mathematical model enabled the creators to overcome the difficulty of identifying the correct level of cooperation within the swarm applied to the pandemic scenario.

We uploaded into the model the data of the Civil Protection and Health Authoritites of several countries, as well as those of the World Health Organization, de-seasonalized by econometric techniques comparable to those utilized to stabilize the sets of data employed in the predictive models of economic research.

We moroever uploaded into the model the most reliable forecasts that could be obtained on citizens’ behaviours in the countries concerned in complying with the prescriptions of the health authorities. More particularly, we developed separate forecast models for China, and the eight jurisdictions where Stanley is currently operative: England, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Romania, Croatia, Malta and Cyprus. China, which is now showing considerably stabilized data, was utilized as “control patient”, and compliance rankings were assigned to the other jurisdictions against the Chinese benchmark.

China was thus assigned compliance ranking “100”, and degressively lower rankings were assigned to other countries. The actual rankings assigned will not be made public. We, though, like to think that Italy, which was in its history always capable to summon its best resources in the hardest times, gained the third ranking, hence, a surprisingly “high” compliance level. And we like to think that, albeit in a tragic context, Italy did set the standard for the rest of the world, amongst others, for the spirit of self-sacrifice of its medical personnel, public and private alike, and the exemplary behaviour of its citizens.

Liverpool, 1 April 2020 – The findings of a study commissioned by the Stanley Board to the Robotics Division of the Liverpool Group on the likely trends of the Covid-19 pandemic in the coming weeks, were disclosed and released to all Stanley affiliates in Europe. The Robotics Division is the same that created humanoid robot Alicia, which utiizes the most advanced techniques in giving life to virtual products. The virus is dealt with by a mathematical model that interprets the pandemic as if were spread by a swarm of hostile robots. Each individual virus is looked at as if it were a single nano-robot, and its effects are analyzed in relation to its movements, by the same techniques of logistic prediction that are applied to gauge the simultaneous movement of millions of very low cooperation level software drones (swarms). It is an approach that was fine-tuned for the first time in the world at Magellan Robotech with respect to specialized software simulating the movements of virtual entities, in that case characterized by a high cooperation level. An ad hoc mathematical model enabled the creators to overcome the difficulty of identifying the correct level of cooperation within the swarm applied to the pandemic scenario.

We uploaded into the model the data of the Civil Protection and Health Authoritites of several countries, as well as those of the World Health Organization, de-seasonalized by econometric techniques comparable to those utilized to stabilize the sets of data employed in the predictive models of economic research.

We moroever uploaded into the model the most reliable forecasts that could be obtained on citizens’ behaviours in the countries concerned in complying with the prescriptions of the health authorities. More particularly, we developed separate forecast models for China, and the eight jurisdictions where Stanley is currently operative: England, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Romania, Croatia, Malta and Cyprus. China, which is now showing considerably stabilized data, was utilized as “control patient”, and compliance rankings were assigned to the other jurisdictions against the Chinese benchmark.

China was thus assigned compliance ranking “100”, and degressively lower rankings were assigned to other countries. The actual rankings assigned will not be made public. We, though, like to think that Italy, which was in its history always capable to summon its best resources in the hardest times, gained the third ranking, hence, a surprisingly “high” compliance level. And we like to think that, albeit in a tragic context, Italy did set the standard for the rest of the world, amongst others, for the spirit of self-sacrifice of its medical personnel, public and private alike, and the exemplary behaviour of its citizens.

PR & content consultancy launches in Malta for iGaming sector

Arrow&Square, a B2B comms and content consultancy with a footprint in Malta and London, is offering free advice for iGaming companies whose marketing communications activity for 2020-2021 has been disrupted by the Coronavirus outbreak.

Jools Moore, director at Arrow&Square, commented, “Notwithstanding the global health crisis, this is a tricky time for businesses everywhere, but the show must go on. We’re keen to support the iGaming community, and offering some free advice is a great way to introduce ourselves, no strings attached. In the short term we all have to adapt marketing strategies to this ‘new normal’, with no end in sight for the current disruption.”

Any companies interested in discussing their marketing communications in 2020 should visit www.arrowandsquare.com to get in touch with the team for a complimentary review.

Cara Kerr, Head of European Recruitment – Pentasia

Who can tell what the next few months will bring? For HRs and business leaders, the future is about as uncertain as it’s ever been. Priority, quite rightly, has first been placed on protecting workers amidst often significant threats to business – and thankfully many thousands of industry jobs have been saved worldwide. But what comes next?

Recruitment may not be the first item on iGaming employers’ agenda. In fact, recruitment freezes or delayed processes have already slowed the market considerably.

As we consider the path ahead, though, two factors will play an important role in bringing recruitment plans back to the forefront:

The SBC Digital Summit is to feature a line-up of 140 big names from the global betting and gaming sector, with speakers including Carsten Koerl (CEO & Founder, Sportradar), Jesper Svensson (CEO, Betsson Group) and Paris Smith (CEO, Pinnacle).

Set to be the industry’s biggest ever online conference, the SBC Digital Summit boasts a comprehensive agenda focused on the challenges and opportunities the industry faces in light of the disruption caused to business and wider society by the COVID-19 pandemic.

It includes expert panels covering sports betting, online casino and slots, opportunities in Latin American, lotteries, payments, developments in the US market, and digital marketing, spread over five days from 27 April to 1 May 2020.

Thousands of delegates logging on to the SBC Digital Summit from their remote offices around the world can look forward to invaluable insights from a host of CEOs from major players in the industry.

Japan Racing simulcasts latest addition to distributor’s catalogue of international thoroughbred racing

Louisville, KY. April 2nd, 2020 – Sky Racing World, the Louisville, Kentucky-based distributor of international horse-racing content and subsidiary of Australian wagering operator Tabcorp, has announced the launch of a new simulcasting product that will make Japan National Association of Racing (NAR) horse racing available to North American audiences. The service will officially launch on Sunday night,  April 5th, with races from Tokyo City Keiba, Oi Racecourse.

The Japan National Association of Racing is Sky Racing World’s exclusive partner in distributing the weekly simulcasts every Sunday through Thursday night. At commencement, racing will be offered from three tracks: Tokyo City Keiba, Funabashi and Kawasaki, with Sunday night’s first post at 1:30am ET (i.e. early Monday morning). All tracks and races will be conducted on a dirt surface.

Audiences will now be afforded access to an additional range of quality Japanese racing events, including the Tokyo Sprint (Listed) on opening night and the Gr1 Japan Dirt Derby (1m 1/8) from Tokyo City Keiba on July 7th. A familiar range of betting types will be available, including: Win, Place, Exacta, Trifecta, Superfecta, Pick 3, and Pick 4.

Woohoo Games, whose client base boasts operators across a number of countries, are further expanding their portfolio of games with two new video slots as the demand for their offering continues to rise. Both Cyberpunk Wars and Racer Babes have genuine global appeal and can be placed in an array of different languages including; English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese and Indonesian.

The narrative behind the Cyberpunk Wars experience is an exploration of the back streets of the future with a gang of hi-tech rebels. The dystopian world of tomorrow is the backdrop for a bright band of rebels and glowing graphics. Players must choose their sidekick carefully – their skills and street-smarts can really change the game.

Features: Random progressive Jackpot – players can win at the end of any game. Big Win animations and expanding wilds.

Racer Babes, on the other hand, takes the player on the ride of their life. The action is fast, furious, and packed with special features. Players who hit three bonus symbols on the reels unlock a bonus game. Select the right supercar and there is a chance to turbocharge the last bet up to 300x.

Espresso Games has formed a strategic partnership with SoftGamings, who is one of the industry’s major players. This deal will see Espresso Games’ thrilling line-up of slots, roulette, cards, video poker and fixed odds games available via SoftGamings encompassing platform and services.

A boutique studio specialising in developing innovative and stylish games for online and mobile casinos across the globe, Espresso Games, is passionate about creating unique and diverse content to captivate, entertain and retain players. Their patented slot accumulated-prize engines – Racepot® and Reelpot® – are prime examples of the company’s high creative standards. Espresso Games’ multilingual products and RNG are certified in some of the world’s most restrictive territories, which means operators can rest-assured that Espresso Games are industry compliant and trusted. 

“This is a significant step forward in terms of making our premium content accessible to a wider audience,” says the CEO of Espresso Games Max Rizzo. He continues, “with SoftGamings’ accomplished platform, reputable expertise and commitment to customer care, we are certain we will achieve great success from this alliance.”

“We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Espresso Games. Thanks to its rich game portfolio covering different themes and a wide range of captivating features their games will be a fresh and reviving offer to our operators” said Irina Sazonova, the Director of Partnerships at SoftGamings.

Provider unleashes blockbuster package of betting markets as alternatives to postponed fixtures

Friday, 27th March 2020: Digitain, the global sportsbook and platform provider, is set to take a stand against the COVID-19 downturn by boosting its catalogue of alternative markets to the front of its ranks.

The company further strengthened its industry-leading credentials with a rapid and well-adapted reaction to the pandemic, instituting a remote working policy and revamping its award-winning in-house casino offering within 24 hours of the outbreak.

Ready to supply its global operator network with one of the industry’s most comprehensive packages of content, Digitain has unveiled an action-packed line up to keep betting events going throughout the day.

MARCH 31, 2020 – FIONA PALMER, chief executive of GAMSTOP, is urging anyone worried about their gambling while they are stuck at home during the coronavirus lockdown to exclude themselves from all online gambling websites.

Fears have been raised by MPs that vulnerable customers will increasingly turn to online gambling as a distraction at the very time when they can least afford it, leading to a surge in gambling-related harm. The Gambling Commission has issued new guidance to all licensed companies to keep customers safe and the Betting and Gaming Council, which represents operators, has published a ten-point plan for its members to follow.

GAMSTOP is a free service that allows consumers to exclude themselves from gambling websites. By registering with GAMSTOP, consumers can choose to restrict themselves from all UK-licensed online gambling sites for a minimum period of either six months, a year or five years.

More than 130,000 people have registered with GAMSTOP since the scheme went live in April 2018, with 73% opting to self-exclude for five years, the maximum period available. Early evidence shows that nine out of ten consumers who chose to self-exclude for a shorter period have not returned to gambling at the end of their chosen timeframe, which means their self-exclusion has automatically remained active.

Leadership role will see Maclean bring over 15 years of industry experience to iGaming supplier

30th March 2020 – Pariplay Ltd., a gaming technology company serving iGaming operators, land-based casinos and lotteries, has announced the appointment of Andrew Maclean as its new director of sales. With more than 15 years of experience in the iGaming industry, Maclean will be responsible for spearheading Pariplay’s evolving sales strategy and providing a voice of leadership across the team.

Maclean’s comprehensive background, which includes serving as director of commercial account management at SG Digital, the digital division of Scientific Games, will be essential in driving Pariplay’s sustained growth. Other senior roles which he has held, include head of partner management at Ongame and commercial director (Nordics) at NYX Gaming Group Ltd., prior to its 2018 acquisition by Scientific Games. Originally from Scotland, Maclean studied history and politics at Lancaster University and has lived in Sweden since 2004.

The appointment coincides with an eventful period for Pariplay, during which the company has announced a series of new game releases and industry partnerships. The B2B provider has been especially focused on expanding its global footprint from a regulatory perspective, making its full catalogue of online products available to a wider customer base.