• Light & Wonder suffers legal reverse over Dragon Train game.

• Boyd Gaming buys Resorts Digital to bolster online operations.

• In +More: LeoVegas’ in-house studio, Macau stocks stimulus boost.

• Startup focus is cooperative DFS platform Bettor Together.

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Dragon vs. Dragon

Come not between the dragon and his wrath: Light & Wonder shed almost $1.5bn of value yesterday after the company said overnight on Monday that a US District Court in Nevada had granted Aristocrat a preliminary injunction relating to L&W’s ‘Dragon Train’ slot. 

• The share price ended the day down 19.5% while Aristocrat rose 3.5% in Tuesday trading in Sydney.

Toughing it out: Analysts at Macquarie said Dragon Train is worth around $70m of adj. EBITDA or less than 5% of the company’s 2025 adj. EBITDA target of $1.4bn. The team said there are ~2k gaming ops installs worth $30m+ of adj. EBITDA while outright sales are worth ~$40m of adj. EBITDA. 

• L&W confirmed it will stop shipping the game globally with immediate effect but the Truist team suggested it isn’t expected to remove any current placements.

• Jefferies said L&W would file a motion for clarification on whether existing games remain in service.

Brazen: The dispute centers on allegations leveled by Aristocrat that L&W “misappropriated” trade secrets in relation to its own similarly named ‘Dragon’s Link’ slot game.

• A press release from Aristocrat said the court in finding in favor of Aristocrat showed L&W “was able to develop Dragon Train without investing the equivalent time and money.” 

• The court, in granting the preliminary injunction, noted the “public interest in protecting trade secrets and preventing competitors from receiving an unfair advantage.”

Broken links: Aristocrat originally filed suit in March alleging L&W’s game was designed by a former Aristocrat game designer, Emma Charles, who had worked on Dragon Link and left in 2017.

• It said she and another former Aristocrat employee, Lloyd Sefton, who left the company in 2016, gave information to L&W to create its new game.

IP, IP hooray: Aristocrat’s chief product officer Matthew Primmer said the “significant” legal decision “underscores the value” of the company’s intellectual property and “reaffirms our commitment to protecting the integrity of our business.”

🐲🔥 In flames: L&W suffers a share price collapse

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Beefed up

Augmented reality: Boyd Gaming has augmented its interactive business with the acquisition of Resorts Digital for an undisclosed sum. As part of the deal, Boyd gets ResortsCasino.com, MoheganSunCasino.com and one so far unused skin. Each site will retain a cross-sell link with the physical casino.

• The Resorts business will retain the market access partnerships with DraftKings, Penn Entertainment (for ESPN Bet) and PokerStars. 

Accretive: Boyd said in a statement to AP that the purchase “is consistent with Boyd Gaming’s strategy of building a profitable regional iGaming business integrated with our existing nationwide portfolio.” It added that it hoped to “further grow its presence” in a leading iCasino state.

• As of the August data from the NJDGE, ResortsCasino.com has notched up iCasino GGR of $15.9m YTD while MoheganSun.com stands at $8.5m.

Humming along: In Q2, Boyd’s online division reported revenues of $130m, up 52% YoY, with a large element of that coming from the market access partnership with FanDuel. Adj. EBITDA rose nearly 28% to $17.1m. 

• At the time of the Q2s, Boyd said it expected online adj. EBITDA to come in at $65m-$70m.

Old Pala act: Recall, in 2022 Boyd bought the Pala Interactive business for $170m in cash in order to facilitate gaining control of its own iCasino operations.

• The company subsequently migrated its Stardust Casino operations to the platform from FanDuel.

Not the M&A you wanted, but the M&A you’re going to get: On the Q2 analysts call, CEO Keith Smith downplayed speculation of any M&A in the interactive space saying he didn’t see any “material M&A on the horizon.”

• “When we started that business a couple of years ago, we talked about having a regional strategy, not a national strategy,” he added at the time.

• Boyd has been the subject of much M&A speculation in recent months with reports surfacing in the summer that it had made an approach to buy Penn Entertainment.

• That included the possibility of a joint bid with online partner Flutter.

+More

Flight of fancy: MGM Resorts-owned LeoVegas has announced a new in-house gaming studio, which it said will develop group-exclusive games offering “medium-volatility experiences designed for long-term enjoyment.”

• The new studio will give LeoVegas “complete creative and technological freedom, further enhancing control over the iGaming ecosystem.” 

• It added that the debut title, Where Pigeons Dare, will premiere on LeoVegas today, September 25.

Brazilian market newcomer Grupo Silvio Santos has selected OpenBet to provide the backend for its forthcoming OSB offering in the country.

Wynn Resorts’ Wynn Macau has extended the maturity of its $1.5bn revolving loan facility to September 2028.

GiG Media has completed its transformation into Gentoo Media, listed on the Oslo and Stockholm exchanges, with the final stages of the separation from the platform business almost complete. That business will be renamed GiG Software. 

G2E: Peter Jackson, CEO at Flutter Entertainment, and his equivalent at MGM Resorts, Bill Hornbuckle, are to co-headline the keynote session on the Tuesday at G2E in conversation with MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer.

What we’re reading

Aaron LaBerge, CTO at Penn Entertainment, on LinkedIn yesterday: “Our expectations are clear: we don’t just want to be in the middle of the pack, we want to win.”

Macau boost

Stimulus: A swathe of Chinese government actions to reinvigorate the economy provided an across-the-board boost to Macau-related stocks.

• Melco Resorts led the way with a 9% increase, followed by Las Vegas Sands (+5.5%), Wynn Resorts (+5%) and Galaxy (+3.5%).

The “policy bazooka” includes a 0.50% cut to the central bank reserve ratio and a signal of a further monetary loosening further down the line. Bank of America said the move was likely to boost sentiment, even if more measures might be needed.

Further reading: China gets a “massive adrenaline shot.”

Venture capital firm Yolo Investments manages in excess of €500m in capital across 100 exciting fintech, gaming and blockchain companies. The Yolo Investments' Gaming fund, regulated by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, has taken positions in fast-growth suppliers and operators, including Dabble and Enteractive. Yolo Investments (yolo.io) wants to hear from readers of this newsletter. Get in touch with your pitch, or for a chat about innovative products which can plug into our investment ecosystem.

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Funding news

LA-based gamification provider Locker has announced it has raised $2m in seed funding led by Hatchery Investments and is launching a new product vertical called ‘Leagues,’ which makes it possible for anyone to create and host their own custom Locker League. 

Vladimir Malakchi’s Xanada Investments said it has invested in its second company, Gamixter, which provides revenue and player retention offerings.

Inside the raise – GamePLAI

Team building: The specialist odds provider and previous startup focus raised £1.5m way back in January from a selection of industry veterans including ex-Pinnacle trading director Marco Blume, and co-founder Graham Savage says the cash has been used to double the size of the team. 

Telling a story: Unsurprisingly, Savage says the company is seeing a “huge emphasis” being placed by operators on both in-play and props products and the onus is on companies such as GamePLAI to “develop innovative products underpinned by compelling and accurate pricing.”

• One operator GamePLAI is working with is Betana, which went live with a selection of GamePLAI’s player props during the summer’s football tournaments.

• In parallel, it also launched a proof of concept for a football narrator product with a leading UK operator, which generates contextual markets in-play relative to the most recent game state. 

• Savage notes that by the end of the year GamePLAI will be live with market-leading partners across three separate continents.

Startup focus – Bettor Together

Who are you? The Grosse Pointe, Michigan cooperative daily fantasy platform was founded in April 2022 by Mark Szandzik and Jason Aubrey. 

What’s the big idea? Bettor Together is the first cooperative DFS platform to allow users to team up with friends and play against others in pool-based contests. “Communication, strategy and teamwork are keys to success in our immersive, skill-based contests,” says Szandzik.

• Bettor Together combines familiar facets of traditional DFS such as contest pools, Pick’em-style market and salary cap but adds a social twist. 

• “DFS is great to play alone, but I liken it to the great game of golf,” Szandzik says. “Golf is always fun playing alone, but sometimes it is nice to play in a two- or four-man scramble. 

• “We want to give fantasy players the choice to play together when they feel like it, and that just doesn’t exist today.” 

He says social betting and fantasy is “massive right now,” but there are no options for users to play DFS cooperatively. “So, we’ve created a platform that allows players to play together, enjoy the camaraderie of competing together, and give them an outlet to put their group chats to the test.”

Funding backgrounder: To date all funding has been bootstrapped between the co-founders, with some additional investment from family.  

Growth company news

A provider of pregame and live sports odds called Rimble, which specializes in player props and flash markets in esports and cricket, has announced an integration with Abelson Info. 

Future Anthem has said it will invest a seven-figure sum into its all-in-one personalisation product Amplifier AI with upgrades rolled out progressively over the next six to nine months.

The startup slots studio Bigly has launched with what it says is a unique commercial model that offers operators a capped annual cost agreement.

Kero is a premier micro-betting provider, powering more than 150 operators across the globe. 

Our extensive coverage of fast markets in Football, Basketball, Baseball, and Soccer is a proven method for increasing in-play handle and hold.

Talk to us about how we utilize algorithmic recommendation to power highly contextual micro markets for the ultimate in-play experience.

Events calendar

• Oct 7-10: G2E, Las Vegas

• Oct 21-24: World Lottery Summit, Paris

• Nov 5: Gaming in Germany, Berlin

• Nov 11-14: Sigma Europe, Malta

• Dec 2-4: Thai Entertainment Complex Summit, Bangkok

An +More Media publication. 

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