The Danish Gambling Authority, known as Spillemyndigheden, has released a refreshed version of its anti-money laundering (AML) guidance. This update, formulated after extensive consultations with external stakeholders, aims to support gambling operators, their employees, and other relevant parties. It complements the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority’s Guidance on Preventive Measures against Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism.

New Guidance Incorporates Extensive Revisions

The revised AML guidance includes several key changes, particularly in the areas of risk assessment, policies, procedures, controls, and customer due diligence. These changes reflect both linguistic refinements and substantive updates. To help users navigate the revisions, a version history is now part of the guidance document, detailing specific amendments made.

Additionally, Spillemyndigheden has introduced a new document specifically focused on AML inspections. This document consolidates information that was previously scattered within the AML guidance, offering a comprehensive overview of the inspection process, potential outcomes, and confidentiality issues.

Ongoing Updates and Reporting Requirements

Spillemyndigheden is committed to keeping its anti-money laundering guidance current, ensuring alignment with updates to the Anti-Money Laundering Act, national risk assessments, and best practices in the field.

In other related developments, the authority updated its reporting requirements at the end of last month. These new requirements are set to take effect in 2025, although an exact implementation date has yet to be finalized.

Earlier this year, Spillemyndigheden also issued several orders and reprimands to the gambling operator SkillOnNet for breaches of AML regulations. The company received three orders for AML violations and two additional reprimands related to whistleblowing and business procedures, following an inspection of its compliance materials.

Source: “Spillemyndigheden updates anti-money laundering guidance”. Gambling Insider. June 3, 2024.

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The leading North American sports betting and iGaming operator, DraftKings, released its latest financial report. On Thursday, the company disclosed details regarding its performance for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023, highlighting a significant increase in revenue.

DraftKings’ latest unaudited report reveals that its revenue for 2023 hit $3.67 billion. This result, compared to the $2.24 billion figure posted for the fiscal 2022 shows an increase of nearly 64% year-over-year.

Besides year-over-year, the company posted exceptional results during the fourth quarter as well. In Q4 2023, DraftKings’ revenue soared to $1.23 billion. A comparison to the $855 million reported for the same period in 2022 shows an increase of $376 million or 44%.

The company explained that the result comes after a “continued healthy customer engagement, efficient acquisition of new customers, the expansion of the Company’s Sportsbook product offering into new jurisdictions, and product innovation leading to increased parlay mix and thus higher structural sportsbook hold percentage.”

The fourth quarter marked an uptick in the number of monthly unique players (MUPs). The latest trading update reveals that DraftKings’ MUPs in Q4 increased by 37% year-over-year to 3.5 million. DraftKings said that this uptick highlights strong customer retention and acquisition rates for its iGaming and sportsbook products. Moreover, the company acknowledged that its expansion into new jurisdictions positively impacted the number of MUPs.

The Company Ends 2023 with Excellent Results

Jason Park, DraftKings’ chief financial officer, revealed that the latest results underline the company’s ongoing commitment to implementing operating efficiencies and delivering strong revenue growth. In light of the exceptional performance for the fourth quarter and the first six weeks of 2024, he confirmed that the company updated its revenue guidance.

Park explained: “We are raising the midpoint of our fiscal year 2024 revenue guidance range to $4.775 billion from $4.65 billion and the midpoint of our fiscal year 2024 Adjusted EBITDA guidance range to $460 million from $400 million.” Finally, the chief financial officer said DraftKings anticipates 2024 will be its first full year of positive adjusted EBITDA.

“DraftKings ended 2023 with excellent performance across customer acquisition, retention and engagement as well as structural sportsbook hold percentage despite the worst stretch of sport outcomes we have seen as a public company in the fourth quarter.“

Jason Robins, CEO at DraftKings

Jason Robins, DraftKings’ CEO, also highlighted the strong results posted by the company for the last quarter of 2023. He said that despite challenges related to the outcome of sports events, DraftKings demonstrated strong customer engagement and retention. Focusing on 2024, Robins predicted that the company would keep the focus on its customers while growing the reach of its products and delivering supreme services.

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Genius Sports, a data, technology and broadcast partner that powers the global ecosystem connecting sports, betting and media, has published its financial results for the second quarter of the year, highlighting its recent successes. The company’s revenue for the period exceeded the company’s expectations, causing it to update its guidance.

As reported by Genius Sports, its revenue exceeded the Q2 guidance of $80 million, sitting at $86.8 million at the end of the quarter. This represents a year-on-year increase of 22%.

Betting technology revenue increased by 27% year-on-year. Media technology and sports technology revenues, on the other hand, increased by 22% and 3%, respectively.

The company also reported group adjusted EBITDA of $15.7 million, which exceeds the guidance of $14 million. Year-to-date group adjusted EBITDA, meanwhile, more than quadrupled year-on-year to a stellar $24 million.

Furthermore, Genius Sports reported lower loss from operations. Whereas the company lost $39.7 million in Q2, 2022, it lost only $7.8 million in Q2, 2023. The favorable results were attributed to the improved underlying performance but the improvement was sadly offset by a $29 million reduction in gain on foreign currency.

Genius Sports updated its group revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance for the year, following its spectacular performance during the quarter. According to Genius Sports, the company now expects group revenue to reach $410 million, instead of $400 million.

Adjusted EBITDA guidance, meanwhile, was updated from $49 million to $52 million. In addition, the company expects to expand group adjusted EBITDA margins from 5% in 2022 to 13% in 2023.

Q2 Was a Productive Period for the Company

In its report, Genius Sports also highlighted some of its achievements in Q2, which include, among other things, an extension of its strategic partnership with the National Football League. Moreover, it extended its official data partnership with Football DataCo.

Another sports agreement was an AI-powered tech expansion with the EPL and EFL through cutting-edge Second Spectrum technology. Genius also supplied the FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023 with innovative digital features, once again using Second Spectrum.

Genius Sports also expanded its integrity program with The German Football Association and secured a bunch of accolades, including Best Technology for College Sports at the Sports Technology Awards 2023 and the Sports Betting Supplier award at the EGR North America Awards 2023.

CEO Mark Locke commented on the performance. He said that the company has reached a “significant inflection point in its business.”

Locke said: “The ongoing success through the second quarter perfectly demonstrates our balanced approach in delivering near-term results, while accelerating Genius towards our long-term growth and profit targets.”

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Global B2B online gaming technology supplier, Bragg Gaming Group, released today its financial report for the first business quarter of 2023, posting an impressive performance across all key metrics.

Increases across All Key Metrics

Bragg Gaming Group posted for the first three months of 2023 revenue of €22.9 million ($25.2 million), up 18.1% from €19.4 million ($21.3 million) registered in the first quarter of 2022. Q1 2023 revenue was down 3.4% compared to €23.7 million ($26.1 million) the group reported in Q4 2022.

Commenting on the results, Bragg’s chief executive officer Yaniv Sherman outlined that the quarterly results were influenced by “growing contributions from higher margin proprietary and exclusive third-party games, and platform solutions” which contributed to a total of “170-basis point year-over-year improvement” in the company’s gross profit margin.

Q1 2023 gross profit of €12.2 million ($13.4 million), up 22% to €10.0 million ($11.0 million) in Q1 2022, contributed to Q1 2023 gross profit margin of 53.5%, up from 51.8% in Q1 2022. The quarterly gross profit figure was helped by a change in the group’s product mix towards turnkey PAM customers, managed services and proprietary content.

Adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter of 2023 was €3.9 million ($4.3 million), posting an increase of 28.1% year-over-year (€3.0 million ($3.3 million) in Q1 2022), and Adjusted EBITDA margin also improved, from 15.7% in Q1 2022 to 17% in the reported quarter now.

The higher gross profit and lower corporate, professional and sales and marketing costs, which were partially offset by increases in total employee costs, depreciation and amortization, and IT and hosting costs, resulted in a net loss of €0.5 million ($0.6 million) for the quarter, down from €0.7 million ($0.8 million), or 28.6%, for Q1 2022.

At the end of the quarter, Bragg Gaming Group had cash and cash equivalents of €15.1 million ($16.6 million) and net working capital, excluding deferred consideration of €7.7 million ($8.5 million). At the end of the previous quarter, December 31, 2022, those figures were €11.3 million ($12.4 million) and €6.6 million ($7.3 million), respectively.

Maintains Full-Year Revenue and EBITDA Guidance

Bragg Gaming reiterated its revenue and Adjusted EBITDA guidance for the full-year 2023, expecting revenue of €93-€97 million ($102.2-$106.6 million) and Adjusted EBITDA of €14.5- €16.5 million ($15.9-$18.1 million), representing increases of 10% and 20%, respectively.

“We continue to make consistent progress in scaling the distribution of our new in-house developed and exclusive third-party content, launching with an additional six operators in three North American markets and eight operators in five European markets to date in 2023, including our first entry with new proprietary content in Pennsylvania, Mexico, Italy and Belgium,” Sherman continued with his comments.

Just recently, Bragg announced an agreement with Rush Street Interactive (RSI) that allowed its gaming content and solutions to go live in Pennsylvania via the BetRivers and PlaySugarHouse brands and further expand the group’s US presence, while April saw the business launch content with Caliente Interactive in Mexico and partner with GAMOMAT for content in Italy.

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