Industry News
Cheltenham and Grand National 2025 start now
The madness of Cheltenham and Grand National has been and gone. Congratulations on surviving; you’ve made it through and live to fight another day. So, what’s top of the agenda for today? Preparation for the 2025 edition’s of the Cheltenham Festival and the Grand National, of course!
Here are the six key planning and strategy points to consider in order to give yourself the best possible chance of success next spring.
The work begins now
Yes, Cheltenham 2025 is a long time away. But everything is fresh in your mind as of this moment. Many of the changes you may end up acting on could take a long time to execute, and there’s undoubtedly going to be countless foreseen and unforeseen priorities between now and the end of the year. Start now whilst 2024 performance is fresh in your mind and fresh within the wider business psyche. Keep the festival mindset running for as long as possible to maintain momentum and get flying out the stalls.
Involve all parts of the business
This is not just an exercise for the IT department. Every relevant stakeholder from around the business should be represented. What were customers saying to Customer Services? How did Trading cope when their bet tickers slowed down? What offers and promotions did Marketing take note of that they would like to offer next time? Bring in stakeholders from all business arms to create a holistic view of where the opportunities lie and what challenges need to be overcome.
Look at the data
Get hold of all of your performance metrics from every component of your systems and take the time to do a deep-dive analysis on those numbers. If you haven’t got all the metrics that you’d like to have to hand? Well, there’s your starting point for the list of ‘things to fix immediately’.
Be honest with yourselves
Getting business involvement, analysing all the data, and prompt planning is all well and good. But if you’re not going to be brutally honest with yourselves as an organisation, it may be all for nothing. Yes, it’s important to acknowledge everyone’s hard work and remember all the things that you did right. But you also have to be your own harshest critics about what didn’t go so well and what could be improved on. There’s really no point in doing all this if you’re not going to seriously challenge yourselves to do better.
Next year won’t be the same as this year
You’re going to be delivering a various new features and functionalities, as well as making many changes to your internal systems over the next twelve months. So the technical landscape that 2025’s Cheltenham Festival and Grand National inhabited will be very different to the one just gone. How will that fancy new bet builder widget in development hold up under the unique stresses of Grand National day? What will your new AI recommendations engine do when everyone’s betting on just one event? You don’t need to answer these questions right now, and it’s highly likely that you won’t be able to answer all of these questions now. But you need to bake in consideration of Cheltenham and Grand National to your non-functional requirements for every change you make in the coming months.
Get a high-level plan diarised
You need to start now but you can’t finish now. This is something you’re going to need to come back to periodically until those Cheltenham gates open. It’s a simple but powerful scheduling task: put the key staging posts in relevant team’s diaries now. You don’t want wake up in a cold sweat one morning in January realising that you’re two months out from the Greatest Show on Turf and haven’t made notable progress on the fixes required from this year’s festivals.
By: Graham Cassell, Partner at Circle Squared
The post Cheltenham and Grand National 2025 start now appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.
Welcome to our weekly roundup of American gambling news again! Here, we are going through the weekly highlights of the American gambling industry which include the latest news and new partnerships. Read on and get updated.
Latest News
Bragg Gaming Group announced it has reached an agreement with its lenders, certain entities controlled by Doug Fallon, to repay USD 5 million of its outstanding USD 7 million secured promissory note and to extend the maturity of the remaining USD 2 million until June 6, 2025 (the Note). The company is in the process of securing a new revolving credit facility from a third-party lender. This facility is expected to offer more favourable terms than the existing Note, including lower borrowing costs and improved drawdown flexibility. All other terms of the original Note remain unchanged.
PENN Entertainment Inc announced plans for an expected $180–$200 million project to relocate its Ameristar Casino Hotel Council Bluffs (Ameristar) riverboat casino operations to a new, state-of-the-art land-based property to be rebranded as Hollywood Casino Council Bluffs (Hollywood Council Bluffs). The proposal is approved by the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission in conjunction with a 15-year extension of Ameristar’s partnership with the nonprofit Qualified Sponsoring Organisation (QSO) Iowa West Racing Association. All commercial operators in Iowa are required to have an operating agreement with a QSO licensed to conduct gaming operations. Under the proposed plan, the new Hollywood Council Bluffs is expected to include roughly 125,000 square feet of new development with approximately 58,000 square feet of gaming space.
PENN Entertainment Inc announced that it intends to nominate Johnny Hartnett and Carlos Ruisanchez for election to its Board of Directors following discussions with HG Vora Capital Management LLC (HG Vora). Ron Naples has informed the Board that he will retire from the Board, effective immediately. Barbara Shattuck Kohn and Saul Reibstein have notified the Company that they will not stand for reelection at the 2025 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. The Board now comprises eight directors, seven of whom are independent.
Partnerships
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and Genius Sports Limited have announced a significant extension of their long-term partnership, reinforcing their shared commitment to innovation, transparency and the integrity of college athletics. Under the expanded agreement, Genius Sports has been appointed as the exclusive distributor of official NCAA data to licensed sportsbooks for all post-season tournaments, including March Madness, through 2032. This long-term agreement ensures the delivery of fast, accurate and secure data to the regulated sports betting market.
PrizePicks, the largest daily fantasy sports operator in North America, announced that it has been named the Official Daily Fantasy Partner of the San Francisco Giants. The new partnership strengthens the DFS leader’s presence in professional baseball and features digital and in-park activations at Oracle Park. As part of the multi-year partnership, PrizePicks branding will be showcased prominently throughout Oracle Park with rotating signage behind home plate and LED signage on each baseline. PrizePicks logos will be featured across the K-Counter in right field, creating an interactive experience for fans in the ballpark. Fans seated on top of the right field wall near the strikeout counter will have the opportunity to flip over the PrizePicks branded signs, revealing a “K” for each strikeout earned by a Giants pitcher.
The post Gaming Americas Weekly Roundup – April 28-May 4 appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.
Ruud Bergervoet has been reappointed as CFO of Holland Casino. He will remain financially responsible for the gambling provider for another two years. Bergervoet has already been CFO for two terms of four years, but due to the special circumstances of the company, he has been asked to remain as a director.
CEO Petra de Ruiter said: “I am very happy that Ruud is prepared to stay with us. With his experience and knowledge of the company, he is indispensable at this moment. We have to work very hard in the coming years to keep Holland Casino financially healthy. And I am certain that this is in good hands with Ruud.”
Ruud Bergervoet has been working at Holland Casino since 2017. Before that, he worked as CFO at FD Mediagroep and Sdu Uitgevers, among others.
During the shareholders’ meeting of April 16, Bergervoet was nominated by the Supervisory Board and his nomination was confirmed.
The post Ruud Bergervoet Reappointed as CFO of Holland Casino appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.
AskGamblers has announced that the final voting stage of the 8th annual AskGamblers Awards has started.
The voting phase kicked off on 28 April, and will last until the award ceremony scheduled for 12 June.
As in previous editions of the Awards, players can cast their votes for one of the top 10 finalists in the following categories: Best Casino, Best New Casino, Best Sportsbook, Best New Slot and Best Software Provider.
The Best Crypto Casino, Best Partner and Best Manager categories will traditionally be chosen by the AskGamblers team. This year’s edition introduces a new category, the Superstar Award, a crown achievement handed out to one operator that best represents the values of brands, whose laureate will also be chosen solely by AskGamblers.
Another novelty in this year’s Awards cycle is the Forum vote: the votes from the members of AskGamblers Forum will be counted towards the final tally of votes as a separate voting tier.
Commenting on the launch of the 8th AskGamblers Awards voting stage, Dijana Radunović, General Manager at AskGamblers, said: “Now that we have the finalists, we are entering the final stages of preparation for our biggest night of the year. To say that we are excited about the 8th edition of the AskGamblers Award would be an understatement.”
“As everybody in the team is working tirelessly to make the gala ceremony a night to remember, we invite our players to do their bidding: to give a vote to their favourite contestants and help us choose the rightful winners in the five categories that are open to public vote,” Radunović added.
Before the award ceremony on 12 June, AskGamblers will host the traditional Charity Night on 11 June, where the partners will bid for positions on the website, with the money raised allocated to a humanitarian cause.
The post The 8th AskGamblers Awards Officially Enters the Voting Stage appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.
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