Buying to build
Kaizen Gaming swoops on trading outfit gameplAI
Sports trading provider goes for ‘between €40m and €60m’, say sources.
In +More: Underdog makes DCM acquisition.
Earnings: Inspired Entertainment, High Roller Technologies.
Venture playground: The in focus company is Avanti Studios.
Hard Rock Bet is growing – we know you know! And we want to bring in some more maestros to make beautiful music in our Sportsbook. You need to be among the very best in the industry to be considered for these roles. Are you up to it?
M&AI
Game playa: Kaizen Gaming, the home of Betano, has snapped up UK-based AI-assisted sports trading provider gameplAI for a sum thought to be in the region of €40m-€60m, according to multiple sources spoken to by E+M.
The buyout is the latest piece of M&A in a sub-sector that has seen numerous deals in the last few years as operators seek to secure their sports trading supply lines.
Player association: GameplAI was founded in 2021 by data scientists Nikos Volakis and Graham Savage and backed by a number of industry angel investors including ex-Pinnacle trading director Marco Blume and former head of corporate development at Banach Donal Barron.
The company graduated from the Techstars accelerator program.
Iteration steppas: E+M featured gameplAI as an in-focus growth company in July 2023 when Savage said that the increases in data granularity and reliability meant there was an opportunity to more accurately automate market pricing for a wide range of sports.
He added that the modeling approach was about using automation to reduce the manual overhead on trading teams.
This enabled them to “focus on more value-added tasks.”
I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it: George Daskalakis, CEO and founder of Kaizen, celebrated the news on LinkedIn, posing the question: “Why am I excited about this?”
“Well, when talent, know-how, hard work and ambition combine with a culture of continuously improving and evolving customer experience in the era of AI, one can only be optimistic about the future,” he wrote.
Back in 2023, gameplAI told E+M it was working with Superbet and yesterday its CEO Sacha Dragic responded to Daskalakis with his own comment on LinkedIn, saying “I hate when you are faster and better than us but a lot of respect for this.”
What’s he building in there? Chief product officer at Kaizen, Christos Tzalavras, said via a LinkedIn post that the “future of gametech isn’t found in following trends” but that it was “built by owning the technology that defines them.”
He added that Kaizen was taking a “structured, pragmatic approach” to AI and was investing in solutions that deliver “long-term, tangible value.”
GameplAI fits that model, he indicated, bringing “deep expertise in AI-driven trading and analytics.”
Just like honey: The sports trading sub-sector has been a hive of M&A activity for a number of years. Back in April 2021, PointsBet bought the aforementioned Banach Technologies for $43m.
In July 2023, Entain bought Angstrom for an initial £122m that with the earnout rose to £203m.
In May 2024, DraftKings bought SportsIQ for an undisclosed sum.
It followed that up in August 2024 when it bought the 70% of micro-betting supplier Simplebet that it didn’t already own for $70m in cash, which analysts said at the time could rise to $195m.
Garden of delight: In the press release, Kaizen stated that gameplAI would continue to run as a B2B concern, “servicing existing and future external partners.”
The company said Savage and Volakis along with the rest of the gameplAI team would continue to “play an active role” in the business.
Savage said the partnership would allow the business to “elevate” its tech and “expand our impact.”
Tekkorp Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Kaizen in securing the buyout and CEO Robin Chabbra said in a LinkedIn post he was “delighted” for Volakis and Savage “for finding a partner who will help gameplAI scale greater heights.”
New wave: Sources pointed out this leaves very few independent sports trading entities left, with those including Huddle, Algosport (which is part-owned by Playtech), Kero Sports, Abelson and Swish Analytics.
However, given the nature of the advances being made in AI, the same source suggested there might be a new wave of companies entering the space.
“They are all being bought for strategic purposes,” they added. “The data landscape makes it really difficult to scale longer term.
“These types of businesses are all snapped up by operators within three to five years,” said the source.
They noted Swish Analytics was the “exception that proved the rule” in that it has been ploughing an independent furrow for a number of years.
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+More
Kalshi is expanding outside the US for the first time, partnering with the Brazilian-focused brokerage provider XP to list event contracts tied to events affecting the Brazilian economy, such as inflation and interest rates, which will be made available to users in the country itself. However, the offering will not include sports or other more controversial markets.
Inspired Entertainment has signed a multi-year extension of its virtual sports partnership with bet365, which will see the companies continue collaborating on new virtual products, including an enhanced offering featuring Bet Builder functionality timed for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Inspired said the extension reinforces its long-standing relationship with bet365 and will leverage the operator’s global reach alongside Inspired’s Virtual Sports technology to deliver new products around major sporting events.
The end of the line: Scout Gaming has entered a conditional agreement to sell its wholly owned subsidiary Scout Holding to ImpactWin Group for SEK25m (~$2.73m). The consideration will be paid via a promissory note converted into newly issued ImpactWin shares. Following completion, Scout will hold the shares as its main asset and, if no alternative strategy emerges, plans to seek delisting from Nasdaq First North and pursue voluntary liquidation.
Deal talk
Underdog has acquired Aristotle Exchange, a CFTC-registered designated contract market and derivatives clearing organization, enabling the company to launch its own federally compliant prediction markets exchange. The move allows Underdog to offer sports event contracts directly rather than acting as an intermediary to other exchanges. CEO Jeremy Levine said the company plans to expand prediction offerings, arguing that “prediction markets are primarily about sports” and represent an early-stage opportunity to deepen engagement with sports fans.
Earnings
Inspired Entertainment
Digital delivery: Inspired Entertainment closed 2025 having done what it promised: it got the mix right. Q4 saw the digital businesses cross the threshold of 50% of total EBITDA. For the full-year, adj. EBITDA of $111.4m grew 11% YoY on revenue of $304.1m.
See today’s Earnings Extra edition, which will be sent later this morning (PRO subscribers only).
High Roller Technology
On a high: High Roller Technologies reported Q4 revenues from continuing operations of $4.7m, down from $5.9m in the prior-year period, but the quarter was all about the various announcements the company has made with regard to its imminent launch into production markets.
Despite the revenue decline, net income from continuing operations was $2.m, compared to a net loss of $3m in Q424. Adj. EBITDA improved by $1.9m to negative $427k from negative $2.3m a year previously.
For the full year, revenues were $20.5m, an 11.9% YoY decrease.
The key strategic highlight was a binding LOI with Crypto.com | Derivatives North America (CDNA) to launch an event-based prediction markets product.
The company also completed a $25m registered direct offering and received a $1m strategic investment from Saratoga Casino Holdings.
Puts+Takes – Wynn Resorts
Panic stations: Stifel said the YTD share price fall afflicting Wynn Resorts can be attributed to geopolitical noise rather than any fundamental deterioration in the core thesis behind Wynn Resorts.
The team said the conflation of near-term uncertainty around the Wynn Al Marjan Island IR in the UAE with longer-term impairments is not correct.
Gulf in understanding: They started by separating what is knowable from what is being speculated. After meeting with the management team at a recent Stifel investor conference, the analysts noted that on the UAE exposure, there are limits to current information.
“Wynn isn’t sure given the fact this Middle East unrest has only been going on for a few days,” the team wrote at the start of this week.
“There is really nothing to say right now and any longer-term thoughts would just be speculation.”
The resort isn’t operational until Q127, giving the situation roughly a year to resolve before it affects economics.
Flat line: On Macau margins – the other driver of the sell-off – the Stifel team applied a normalization lens, arguing that reported Q4 results were distorted by hold variance and one-time items.
Strip those out, the team contended, and margins were essentially flat.
They used Wynn’s competitive positioning in VIP and premium mass, where the company over-indexes, to push back against the broader Macau deterioration narrative.
The team noted certain operators aren’t being forced into heavy promotional activity to hold market share.
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Venture playground
In focus – Avanti Studios
Who are you? Avanti is a next-gen live casino supplier that delivers real-time multiplayer games hosted by lifelike digital dealers and is the brainchild of co-founders Jonas Delin, ex-Authentic Gaming, and Gustaf Hagman, the former founder of LeoVegas. Headquartered in Stockholm, the company was set up in May 2025.
What’s the big idea? “Avanti was created to tackle the live casino sector’s biggest pain points: slow innovation, high operating fees, poor dealer presentation and costly scalability,” says Delin.
Utilizing its own in-house motion capture studio, Avanti records the actions and mannerisms of professional dealers and uses them to create lifelike digital clones.
The clones’ appearances and languages are then customized to suit operators’ needs using sophisticated animation and audio tools, before being live streamed in generated HD video.
“The upshot is an impeccably presented and error-free experience that can deliver up to 15 rounds per minute,” says Delin.
“And with no fixed costs, operators have the freedom and flexibility to open an unlimited number of tables at any limits to keep on top of customer demand.
Funding backgrounder: To date, funding has come directly from the founding team supplemented by one strategic check from an investor in an adjacent sector.
“This lean approach has kept us capital-efficient, fully founder-controlled, and free from institutional terms or external pressure,” says Delin.
“Looking ahead, we’re evaluating options for additional funding, prioritizing those with strong strategic alignment.”
Growth company news
Bettortainment has entered into a strategic content partnership with Dabble ahead of this week’s Cheltenham Festival, a move that the company said via a post on LinkedIn was a “significant milestone,” as it establishes itself as the home of the live betting watchalong.
Sports-data company Odditt has launched Bracket Party, a free tool designed to help casual fans create March Madness brackets without needing basketball knowledge. Users answer questions about preferences such as colors, mascots or zodiac signs, which the platform combines with team data to generate a personalized bracket and explain each pick.
A touch flaggy: UK sportsbook startup Bet St George has launched ahead of the Cheltenham Festival despite looming gambling tax increases. Founder Nic Brereton said the company will apply data-analysis techniques from the pharmaceutical sector to improve player marketing and bonusing.
Booming Games has partnered with iGaming platform provider Agreegain to expand its presence across African markets. Under the deal, Booming Games’ portfolio will be distributed via Agreegain’s aggregation platform, connecting the supplier with regional casino operators.
Octoplay is now live in Brazil. Arriving just one month after its Michigan debut, this move marks the start of its South American expansion.
Upcoming earnings
Mar 12: Gambling.com
Mar 30: Gaming Realms
Apr 22: Evolution
Apr 24: Betsson
Venture capital firm Yolo Investments manages in excess of €500m in capital across 100 exciting fintech, gaming and blockchain companies. The Yolo Investments’ Gaming fund, regulated by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, has taken positions in fast-growth suppliers and operators, including Dabble and Enteractive. Yolo Investments (yolo.io) wants to hear from readers of this newsletter. Get in touch with your pitch, or for a chat about innovative products which can plug into our investment ecosystem.
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