Sports betting operators are largely left to operate this way because going after them is expensive, and if black market brands understand one thing, it’s pay the least to make the most. So they have gone after the new online operators in Switzerland in 2019, as they are weak and new – which means they can attack them. Tis is what happens when you bring in affiliates – affiliates are SEO optimised and are under less threat - as they don’t need to establish transactional routes. What they need to do is get to the audience.
Affiliates noted the weakness between legal casino accounts and sports betting accounts, and they started attacking the individual brands. MyCasino, StarVegas, SevenMelons – all of these legal brands are being feasted upon, because in Switzerland, everyone went from having names such as ‘Casino Baden’ as a brick and mortar business, to
Jackpot.ch. Te switch in brand was a move to cover all of Switzerland, but what happened is that the brick and mortar brands were being used illegally online. You click on
CasinoBaden.online, but it’s not Casino Baden. It is a bunch of black market operators.
We have now got to the stage in which Switzerland is such a lucrative market for black market operators that they are queuing to get into the country – that’s how attractive the marketplace is right now. Switzerland has become fundamentally compromised by illegal insurgents. And having broken into the online gambling market they are able to cross sell, by giving online gambling customers free bets on their sports betting platforms.
You have to know and understand the scale of the total marketplace. You need to be able to stop, as an individual brand, what is basically funnel pickpocketing. If you are
MyCasino.ch, you need to make sure that you are not being picked upon for your online terms and your brick and mortar terms. Find out where the black market and the affliates are sitting in your chain. You need opportunities against all competitors, both legal and illegal ones. Yield Sec give you a picture of everything that is going on. Te legal ones are interesting to you – and the illegal ones are dangerous to you. You can then remedy and optimise your marketing – are you buying the right key words, key terms, search words, or are you just paying too much for them?
What we’ve found in the case of Switzerland, is that all the legal casino brands are just kicking each other in the teeth for the same customers every day. And the illegal guys know that and they are spending less money to get to the same audience. Tey are activating those customers for longer and for more money.
We have one view of the marketplace at Yield Sec, we know how much traffic the legal brands have, and we know how much traffic the illegal brands have – so we get to a value per visit which comps over to GGR. We can’t see black market value, we can’t hack their books. Instead, we use widely available data to extrapolate from our systems a clear view of what the customer is worth in the overall marketplace.
Tis industry is beset by crime. We can show
“Affiliates noted the weakness between legal casino accounts and sports betting accounts, and they started attacking the individual brands. MyCasino, StarVegas, SevenMelons – all of these legal brands are being feasted upon, because in Switzerland, everyone went from having names such as ‘Casino Baden’ as a brick and mortar business, to
Jackpot.ch. The switch in brand was a move to cover all of Switzerland, but what happened is that the brick and mortar brands were being used illegally online. You click on
CasinoBaden.online, but it’s not Casino Baden. It is a bunch of black market operators.” Ismail Vali
“If someone outside of the gambling services offered by the Austrian monopoly, offers gambling service to players in
Austria, the contract is null and void. All the customers over the last 30 years can claim their losses back. We are
roughly talking about around €900m per year spent in Austria earned by ‘criminal’
organisations capitalising on Austrian players, which can now be claimed back by players.
Sven Rudolf Thorstensen
you what that crime means for your business on a daily basis, a product basis, a match-by- match and event-by-event basis, and show the relationships between all of the stakeholders; law enforcement, treasury department, competitor brands and by working together holistically we can remove crime from the ecosystem. What we have today is the iceberg marketplace, but we want to get to mountain marketplace, where more of what we see is the legal marketplace and we are actively aware of crime and its influence on the system each and every day.
Sven Rudolf Torstensen Austrian Lawyer
In Austria, the main ‘criminal’ argument centres around the EU’s free movement of goods and services. Teir argument is that we have a licence in Malta, which gives us the right to offer our services in every market of the EU. However, this argument is nonsense. We have criteria that has to be fulfilled in the separate countries and if you adhere to these rules, then a monopoly is perfectly legal. Te objective of these rules is to protect players against criminal acts, which are the reasons for the individual legislation of EU member states.
In Austria, we have a constitutional court, administrative court and a civil court. Te public courts state that the Austrian monopoly is legitimate and complies with the European Court of Justice (ECJ) rulings. Te issue is that the Austrian Civil High Court, before 2016, gave an inconsistent ruling, switching between saying the ruling was legitimate for a monopoly, and at times denying this. In 2016, the Austrian Supreme Court took over the arguments of the constitutional courts and in a famous ruling confirmed that the Austrian monopolies comply with the ECJ.
If someone outside of the gambling services offered by the Austrian monopoly, offers gambling service to players in Austria, the contract is null and void. All the customers in Austria who have suffered losses over the last 30 years can claim their losses back. We are roughly talking about around €900m per year spent in Austria earned by ‘criminal’ organisations capitalising on Austrian players, which can now be claimed back by players.
We have already had a couple of judgements confirming this, including not only that these online gambling contracts are null and void, but also poker games, in which the players are not just entitled to get back the rake from illegal operators, but their entire loss. Te ruling says that even though the money was exchanged between the players, it was first transacted by the illegal operator. Tis is a big issue for the Bwin, Interwetten, etc. Even if you knew the system was illegal, you can still claim your money back.
Te outcome is that compensation is being claimed from these companies. Te total number of cases in Austria approaches 3,500 at more than €350m. Te argument of free movement of services continues, but the case is now closed. Bwin is complying with the judgement and is paying back the money. 888 is also paying back the players - which is setting a precedent in terms of whether the company is listed on the stock exchange or not. Mr. Green isn’t complying. It is a Sweden-based business that has, since the claims against
WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS P39
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