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SmartSoft CEO Guram Gotsadze said the company’s decision to join the AiA reflected its growing focus on the continent and its commitment to supporting the development of regulated and sustainable gaming markets.
“Africa is an important and growing part of SmartSoft’s international strategy, and joining the African iGaming Alliance represents an important step in strengthening our long-term commitment to the continent,” he commented.
Peter Kesitilwe, CEO of the AiA, added: “SmartSoft already has significant exposure to African markets, and we look forward to working with their team on issues ranging from B2B licensing and market access to responsible gaming, channelisation and sustainable regulation.”
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Polymarket has developed its media presence elsewhere. In January, it signed a deal with Dow Jones to provide its prediction market data to several of the publisher’s consumer platforms. The deal covers publications including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch and Investor’s Business Daily.
Prediction markets have become more and more intertwined with sports and entertainment businesses. Polymarket has agreements with Major League Baseball and Sportsradar. Sportsradar provides data and services for more than 20 sports leagues and competitions.
The company has also pursued partnerships outside the normal financial media. Its deals include relationships with major sports organizations and entertainment properties, signaling efforts to integrate prediction markets into mainstream content and information services.
What is Lichess?
For the right audience, likely professional traders and sophisticated retail investors, the CME futures on FutureSports indexes could amount to “Goldilocks” offerings because the derivatives aren’t standard sports bets nor are they carbon copies of the event contracts traded on prediction markets.
The MLB and NHL futures contracts could be deployed by big-money bettors as hedges on various team exposures over the course of those leagues’ seasons.
As for the regulatory outlooks for the ETFs, the SEC hasn’t publicly commented on the NHL funds’ fates and it’s too early to tell what will come of the MLB filings, but there are hundreds of futures-based ETFs on the market today.
