Athena Ascending

What is Athena Ascending?

Prediction market operators are on legal losing streaks, confirming that Beynon is onto something when he says the regulatory environment is the biggest risk facing the industry.

“We continue to view regulation as the largest risk to prediction markets,” says the analyst. “While industry growth remains robust, adverse legal outcomes could materially impact sports contract availability and long-term adoption.”

Amid a string of losses in federal appellate courts, it appears increasingly prediction markets are angling to take their cases to the U.S. Supreme Court, banking that the high court will allow them to continue offering sports event contracts free of state gambling regulations.

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“Over time we expect that knowledge and local presence to help us open conversations with other operators looking to enter or expand in Africa, in the same way our historical B2C experience in Europe underpinned our platform proposition there.

“So this is not an either/or. It is a B2C acquisition that we expect to strengthen our B2B pipeline on the continent.”

GiG exited the B2C space in 2023 when, after a strategic review, the company split its media and platform divisions, the former of which was rebranded as Gentoo Media.

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Another report, commisisoned by Euromat, estimates that Europe’s black market has sustained a compound annual growth rate of 18% between 2019 and 2026, and will be worth up to €13 billion by the end of the year.

For enforcement authorities, however, the challenge is not simply estimating its size. It is keeping track of an ecosystem that can continually change domains, infrastructure and acquisition channels. That is where Madsen sees Trace2Trace fitting in.

One of its investigations concerns a specific globally renowned brand. Madsen says an initial scan identified around 1,600 domains, followed by another roughly 4,500 associated with this operator. That puts the number identified so far at around 6,000, although he believes the actual figure is considerably higher. “I think what we’ve found so far is only a small part of the overall picture,” he says. “I’m almost certain the real number is at least twice as high.”