Ruffled Up

What is Ruffled Up?

Earlier this year, the Illinois Gaming Board approved 65 VGT licence applications in the city, according to the Sun-Times. VGTs are the highest-grossing gaming vertical in Illinois, generating substantially more revenue and taxes than land-based casinos.

Papanier said the components of Bally’s Chicago that are being “reset and re-contemplated” are “all in conjunction with the proliferation of VGTs”. While the current number of licences is low, he asserted that widespread proliferation could result in a “30% to 50% impact on top-line revenue” for the casino and it would be “irresponsible” to continue construction “until we understand what the landscape looks like”.

Bally’s stock jumped 7% in trading on Monday to $9.84. Shares had fallen 30% in the last month in response to uncertainty in Chicago and warnings about the company’s ability to continue as a growing concern in its Q2 earnings report. Former CFO Mira Mircheva resigned on 4 September, prompting Papanier to take over the role on an interim basis.

What is Ruffled Up?

“Why not use the dataset I already have on gambling sites to map the most problematic ones, identify how they are connected and build a deeper picture of the networks behind them?” That thought process eventually gave birth to Trace2Trace.

Trace2Trace is relatively new, but Madsen says its underlying dataset has already grown to around 620,000. And it continues to grow, highlighting the scale of illegal operations in the gambling industry.

“We receive around 7,000 domains a day on average through the lists we monitor, including new and cloned sites,” he explains.

How to play Ruffled Up

That is because trading on prediction markets is illegal down under, according to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, the nation’s regulator on financial services. Last month, in perhaps the ASIC’s strongest warnings yet against the asset class, the commission reiterated that prediction markets are not licensed as financial markets to operate in Australia. Through the guidance, the regulator urged consumers to exercise caution before partaking in certain investments on offshore platforms which have not obtained licensing nationwide.

The advisory could be music to the ears of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, whose league has pushed a federal derivatives regulator in the US to enact more rigorous standards to help protect the integrity of professional sports. Ahead of the matchup, Goodell spoke with CNBC from Melbourne.

“We think there needs to be stronger regulations into the predictive markets,” he said. “We want to see that to protect the integrity of our game – we want to make sure we are protecting the consumers that are on those platforms.”