Enjoy Group, a South American casino and hospitality company, has contacted the Chilean Commission of Financial Markets (Commission for the Mercado Financiero/CMF) about a potential sale of casino properties in Chile and Uruguay. The decision comes in the wake of a failed merger with DREAMS SA.

Enjoy was supposed to merge with the aforementioned company but the deal was abandoned in April. Since then, Enjoy Group has been seeking other long-term strategic plans to boost its profitability.

The announcement follows a publication by the Diario Financiero on July 30, which claimed that Enjoy’s operations in Chile and Uruguay are up for sale.

A sale of its operations in Chile and Uruguay could lead to a favorable transaction that may benefit the company. The move has been coordinated with ASSET Chile, a financial advisor that Enjoy Group hired to explore potential business deals.

ASSET Chile is tasked with seeking interest from potential investors and finding a deal that would benefit the company.

Enjoy promised to keep the CMF informed about any relevant developments in relation to the potential sale.

Chile Seeks to Launch iGaming, Joining the LATAM Revolution

In the meantime, Chile continues to consider the legalization of online gambling, as attested by the recent advancement of an online gambling bill. The measure was first introduced in March and gained traction in June after being stuck in limbo for a while.

For reference, the only legal gaming companies in the country currently are Lotería de Concepción, Polla Chilena de Beneficencia and Teletrak.

The bill still needs additional approvals but its advancement was hailed by the gambling industry. More recently, the country approved changes to the bill, further highlighting the interest in exploring the online vertical.

In other LATAM-related news, Galera.bet, a Brazilian sports betting brand, just joined the International Betting Integrity Association as its latest member. This highlighted the company’s desire to protect the integrity of professional sporting events in the region and oppose sports and betting-related corruption.

The move comes as Brazil prepares to regulate sports betting, paving the way to a revolution in the local gambling market. However, the Brazilian Institute of Responsible Gaming, a newly-founded industry body, expressed its disapproval of changes to the envisioned taxation rules, believing them to be harsh and unsustainable.

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40-year-old Luke Ashton, a father of two, took his own life in April 2021 while fighting his severe gambling addiction which had caused him to lose £5,000 ($6,400) during just one month. One of the gaming operators that Asthon had frequently used since 2012, Betfair, has now admitted that its protection systems have failed to identify the player as an “at-risk gambler.”

In a historic decision, Betfair has been called an “interested person” in the inquest, which is a first in the industry. The company admitted it “should have done more” to protect the vulnerable player who died on April 22, 2021, after he was “consumed” by his addiction. 

Up to 100 Bets a Day

Before losing the large amount during a single month, Ashton had made a habit out of gambling up to 100 times a day. The player preferred the operator’s Exchange platform to bet on horse and greyhound racing events that took place in the UK as well as abroad. 

Betfair describes Exchange as an option that is “generally more low risk” and also one that is used by “sophisticated and highly-skilled” players. In January 2019, Ashton was averaging 55 daily bets. 

During the remainder of the same year, according to the hearing held at the coroner’s office for Leicester and South Leicestershire, Ashton took out £18,000 ($23,000) in total loans in an attempt to clear his debts. 

His addiction peaked in March 2021, when he reached 1,229 bets. March was also the month when he made a £2,500 ($3,200) deposit in a single day.

While the family had to sell their home, Ashton didn’t manage to set himself free of his addiction and continued to frequent a number of gambling websites in the month prior to his demise.

Failing Machine-Learning Algorithm

During the second day of the hearing held earlier in the week, the Flutter-owned operator used the voice of managing director Richard Clarke to admit that their algorithm which is based on machine learning did not identify Ashton as a high-risk gambler. 

The algorithm that is used to closely track customer data is supposed to identify the behavior of players who had used the self-exclusion option from the operator’s platform for six months. 

Ashton used the same exclusion option in 2013, 2014, and 2016. Nonetheless, the algorithm was not able to deem him at high-risk and issue a permanent ban on him.

While Clarke expressed confidence in the company’s compliance with the current regulations, he added that by looking at the player’s activity in March 2021, “it does look like we should’ve done more.”

“Things Have Changed a Lot”

Betfair’s managing director also told the hearing that approximately 10,000 of their customers had placed more bets than Ashton in March 2021, which coincided with the grand opening of the horse racing season.

Since then, added Clarke, a series of changes had been put into practice. Among them, the implementation of a strict £500 ($640) monthly deposit limit for players under the age of 25, a £10 ($12.80) maximum stake limit on all slots, and a monthly net deposit limit for all returning customers at the end of a self-exclusion period, after a detailed assessment via phone.

Clarke also mentioned financial vulnerability checks via third-party reference agencies as an additional prevention measure. 

Mr Nicholls, who represented Ashton’s family during the hearing, said Betfair should have excluded the victim from their website. The inquest will be resumed on June 16.

In April, Betfair was fined for offering markets for 148 matches between 2021 and 2022 for the U21 Allsvenskan, a youth soccer league on which operators are forbidden to offer wagering. 
In May, the National Health Service in the UK revealed that, based on its Problem Gambling Severity Index scores, around 0.3% of gambling adults were labeled as problem gamblers and 2.8% of adults were found at risk to engage in problem gambling.

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The Indian Gaming Association and Pechanga.net of America presented a Tribal Gaming Seminar at ICE in London last week. One of the presentations to attendees focused on learning lessons from recent attempts, failures, and successful launches of online casino gaming and sports betting in the U.S.

This was done in light of what legacy gaming providers such as tribal operators are willing to participate in as far as regulatory models and to demonstrate the evolving attitudes of tribal operators looking for a win-win situation with other stakeholders.

The seminar outline suggests that new operators need to secure the cooperation of current stakeholders in the gambling industry before launching products in those states, some of them large and potentially very lucrative, like California where the Pechanga Band of Indians operates Pechanga Resort Casino near Temecula, California. The casino is one of the largest resort casinos in America with over 5,400 slot machines and about 200,000 sq ft of gaming space.

Tribal and Commercial Propositioned Both Failed in November

Two separate ballot propositions for sports betting failed to pass in California during the last regular election when residents were asked whether or not they wanted online betting – a positive result could have eventually led to online casino regulation as well. One of the propositions was backed by commercial operators and the other one was primarily backed by the state’s tribes.

Commercial global brands were unable to push their referendums across the finish line, largely due to a lack of understanding about the tribes’ unique positions in the markets as well as the political clout they heft, along with the revenue goals the legacy operators seek for their constituents – the tribal members.

The synopsis stated that the tribes are not opposed to innovation, modernization, and expansion into new verticals and channels as long as it doesn’t threaten their future participation and involvement in them.

According to an in-depth report on CDC Gaming Reports, when asked how he expects online gaming to change over the next two years, Mark Macarro, Pechanga Band of Indians Chairman, told listeners at the seminar that iGaming is inevitable in the state of California and that Millennials are driving the new gaming channels.

“I think there’s a demographic proclivity to want to play online. It doesn’t exist right now with the Baby Boomers and Gen X. But Millennials are different players and we’re not sure that slot machines will be what they want to play”, he said.

Not in my Backyard Unless I Play Too

Macarro was joined on the panel by California Nations Indian Gaming Association (CNIGA) chairman James Siva. The CNIGA chairman was also of the opinion that the commercial betting bill was rejected because voters expected the commercial interests to cooperate with tribal gaming interests in the state.

Siva enumerated the number of tribal gaming interests in the US at 270 and noted that 70 of those tribes’ locations are within the state’s borders.

Tribal gaming represents about a quarter of all gaming revenue in the US and 44% of that occurs in California, according to Siva.

“So you break that down and that means that California tribes represent nearly a tenth of the entire gaming market of the U.S. Commercial, tribal, everything”.

He noted that perhaps cooperation or diplomacy may have been a more successful tactic than steamrolling, per see.

“Either they massively underestimated the size and reach of those tribes, both politically and financially, or they maybe had bad campaign consultants”, he said.

Panelists Agree Tribal/Commercial Partnerships may be way Forward.

“I think there’s still a path for tribes and the commercial operators to work together, but it’s going to be a path and relationship that’s decided by the tribes. This isn’t the first time we’ve had commercial entities want a seat at the table as equal to tribes”, Siva said.

This need for commercial entities to respect the sovereignty of the California tribes and negotiate with them for access to California, as they would with legislators and regulators in other states, was reiterated by Macarro, who promised that the tribes would always counter non-diplomatic attempts to launch in the state

“Among the things we learned is that if you have two similar-sounding measures in front of the voters on the same ballot, they will get confused and vote no”, he said.

“So if nothing else changes from the corporates, if they make another run at this without doing a lot of the stuff we talked about as being necessary to be successful, it’ll be regarded as hostile by the tribes. And all we would have to do is put another ballot on the initiative. Confuse the voters, they’ll vote no, and both will go down in flames again”, he said.

Source: ICE London: Tribes tout igaming as ‘inevitable’ future of gambling in California, CDC Gaming Reports, February 8, 2023

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