Cop The Lot

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While this initially seemed terrifying, I quickly discovered that this outsider status was a gift. It has allowed me to view the industry through fresh eyes. I do not have any preconceptions about companies or products. This has become my superpower, allowing me to analyse the industry without bias and, hopefully, help shape its future.

iGaming was not the industry I set out to work in. Before 2021, I worked in finance and business – agro companies, management consultancy and investment funds, none of which were remotely linked to the industry.

In 2021, I joined an investment fund focused on startups harnessing AI and machine learning. In the process, I had a chance encounter with an iGaming investor. This sparked a conversation that would change the course of my career. He pointed out that iGaming was dramatically underutilising its data potential. There was an opportunity here, and once we began exploring it, the thread just kept unravelling.

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Corfai Capital Managing Partner and Founder Ben Robinson is even more bullish on the price, pointing to the circumstances in which GiG was able to acquire the business.

“On the numbers GiG has disclosed it looks cheap,” he says. “€16.4 million for 80% implies an EV of €20.5 million against roughly $50 million of run-rate NGR, 30% year-on-year growth and positive cash generation. €6m of cash on day one for a business generating $50 million of NGR tells you who needed the deal.”

Although Bally’s takeover of Evoke may have prompted a slightly discounted price and a quick decision for GiG to buy 888Africa, the continent has been part of GiG’s plans for a while Richards insists. “We received the information memorandum in Q2 2026,” Richards adds. “Africa has long been a market that our CEO Richard Carter has admired and his insight enabled us to move quickly to be able to announce the principal commercial terms at our results at the end of August.”

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The report also cites brands targeting a specifically banned vertical or product within a jurisdiction as driving black market activity. While markets across Europe have many examples, one such flagged in the report is that iGaming remains illegal for licensed operators in France.

“The largest black market operators have scaled to create recognisable brands with traffic that can compare to domestically licensed operators,” the report’s authors wrote. “The top group of sites by common owner has a 12% share of traffic, while the largest single brand has 10%.”

Beyond offering crypto payment solutions, a number of black market operators are licensed in “light touch” offshore jurisidictions which use opaque offshore operating structures to help to obscure company ownership and make local enforcement against these companies complex, the report noted.