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A daily podcast delving into the biggest stories of the day throughout the sports betting and igaming sector.
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of iGaming
Daily where, and I feel like I start every
single podcast saying this, we're in sunny,
well, Lisbon now. It was Barcelona last year,
but we're in sunny Lisbon and it is sunny, it's
roasting, but we're at the SPC Summit and I'm
joined by Jessica Wellman, the editor of SPC
Americas and Callum Williams, the senior journalist
at Payment Expert. How are you both doing today?
Enjoying Lisbon?
Um, cause it's so massive. So I've just dabbled
so far in the event and ready to see what more
there is. Yeah. I've got lost a few times already.
I've only been here about two hours. So, yeah,
it's, uh, it's, uh, you say about 10 times bigger
than Barcelona. 10 times. Maybe. I don't know.
10 times bigger than that. I know it, I think
it's like two or three times the size. Um,
I mean, they've doubled the amount of, um, people
that are expected to come here this week. Um,
which is incredible. I remember my first.
just after COVID and that was, I think there
was only half the size then that there was
expected due to restrictions. I think it was
like 5,000 there at the time. So to see the
growth of the year on year and what I'm seeing
now, it is no under understatement that it
is massive. Yeah. And I've only managed to get
to the casino halls cause I'm running left,
right and center with interviews in that section.
But if it's you're doubling, you tripling that
cause I think you've got two other halls with
sports betting section and then you've got
the affiliate and payment zones as well. Mm
hmm. My legs already hurt and I really shouldn't
have played football yesterday. It was a rookie
move. Before we delve into the aristocat, light
and wonder topic, just a quick shout out to
our supporter of the iGaming Daily podcast
and that's Optimove, the number one CRM marketing
solution for the iGaming market. For listeners
out there, you can still claim your first month
of Optimove by visiting optimove.com forward
slash SBC. Again, I'll leave links in the description
below. But no, thank you for joining us and
we're going to talk. We're not really gonna
do it the usual way we would at an event where
we talk about kind of trends that are happening
or what we've been up to. Because one, we've
just got here. But also there's an interesting
development in America's, Jess, in America
with Light and Wonder and Aristocrat, correct?
Yes. So for those keeping track, Light and
Wonder has a number of lawsuits pending. The
two that really have been getting a lot of
play are one from Aristocrat and one from Evolution,
both saying,
In this aristocrat one, what's happened today
is that a judge has granted what's called a
preliminary injunction and the action is essentially
that Light and Wonder is not allowed to offer
its Dragon Link game anymore or not anymore
until the case reaches a resolution. The matter
at hand in the case is Dragon Train and this
other game Dragon Link and whether or not Light
and Wonder by hiring a former aristocrat engineer
has basically copycatted the game. What some
outlets are getting wrong about this, this is
not a resolution in the case. The judge is
simply saying, looking at the merits of the
case, it stands to reason that aristocrat could
win and that they have a claim. And since they
do, until this case is done, you can't offer
this game anymore. Light and Wonder is going
to appeal that injunction and then obviously
they're going to continue to go to trial with
the rest of the case and Aristocrat taking
a bit of a victory lap, but perhaps in its communications
overstating exactly what this means. Yeah,
I mean, just listen, we're going to talk about
payments later with Callum, but this is an
interesting story and it's one that ever since
I joined the industry about four and a half
years ago, I was a writer on slot beats. And
my first impression when looking at slots was
like... How the hell do they get past copyright
infringements anywhere due to kind of how closely
they tie stuff to films? An example, I'm not
going to name the company, but they made a
slot title and it was pretty much based off,
you're like, this is a cartoon. So it fits
my narrative. Of course it's a cartoon. It's
always a cartoon with you. But the film surfs
up, I don't know, are you aware of it? I'm cognizant
it exists and that's about it. I have watched
the film. Yeah, should I shoot up on the...
Yeah, you know how they got around this? Because
you're the only person that's watched Surfed
Up and even noticed. Wait, Shia LaBeouf was
in it, it was fantastic. Like Penguin Surfing.
But they literally, it was a like for like,
copying of Surf's Up for that slot title. And
even in my head I was like, how are they getting
around this? Because it's so close to the actual
product that it has to be copyright infringement
in some way. there's no license to it because
it's not the actual surf, like surf or film.
Stacey Doe Let me clarify. So do these games
both involve dragons? Sure. That's not really
what the issue is. The issue is the mechanic
and the random number generator, how often
and frequency of payments, what triggers those
payments. That's what they're challenging.
I mean, they are like, and by the way, it's
also even a dragon, but that's kind of the
tangential piece of this. And what's at play
here is less that Cause I think that you know
better than I do, James. It seems like there's
waves in slots where like it's gonna be barnyard
critters this year and everybody's gonna have
farm animals. And then next year it's gonna
be, you know, dragons and unicorns and things
like that. So you have those kind of lookalike
games and that's a bit of a different issue.
This one is like the design and the mechanic
and the thing that makes this game compelling
is what you are stealing. Yeah. I think my...
point was kind of... Oh, I wanted to clarify
because I realised... Yeah, yeah, yeah. It
was a good thing to clarify. I think mine was
because it was so closely tied to the film
that it was indistinguishable to me being a
huge cartoon source up fan that it baffled
me how they get around it. But when you actually
come to the mechanical side of things, that
is a lot, I think it's a lot actually easier.
I mean, there's like spreadsheets in this,
in the evidence that's like, hi, this woman
used to work here and now she works here and...
left with this spreadsheet, and if you look
at their spreadsheet, it's set up the exact
same way. It's a bigger trail than, well, maybe
I just also thought about how fun it would
be if penguins served. I guess I'll also ask
a question, Jess, just jumping in. Is there
any type of trademark or copyright rules regarding
those type of mechanics, or is it just, is
it a bit more vague? So that's a bit of what
the evolution lawsuit is, is about a product
called Lightning Roulette, where it's a new
game. The concept of the game itself is copyrighted
and patented. And then they're arguing that
Lightning X, which, Roulette X is what they
call it, the Light and Wonder product. is the
same idea where it's roulette, but you can
hit like a bonus essentially and get paid a
bunch. So yeah, you can patent the game itself.
You can also file copyrights and stuff on names
and things like that. But it's a weird one
because it's no joke that there's so many slots
on so many different mechanics flooding the
market each day, let alone each week, each week,
let alone each day. Sorry, I'll do it that
way. But you're always going to have some crossover.
So, and I don't know what I am literally going
off my suits knowledge, the Netflix show, well
it is a Netflix show to me, where it's like,
is it like a 30 to 35% kind of similarity? Then
you kind of cross over to the patent thing,
you have to get it under 30% difference? I don't
know, I'm- I mean this is my suits knowledge,
this is sort of a trade in to like US law. For
those of you who listen to Charlie and I, at
least once an episode I have to remind everyone
I am not a lawyer, so don't quote me on this
one. They didn't in this particular one, they
didn't speak about a threshold of percentage,
but that might be the case. Yeah, I think again,
I am going off Suits knowledge here, but it's
also kind of away from iGaming. There's a current
video game lawsuit with Nintendo where they're
doing a pattern infringement on a company called...
Coming with a copy, they created a game called
Power World, which was very, very similar to
how Pokemon worked, but their pattern infringement
was... how they threw the Poke balls to capture
these creatures. And it's kind of that patterned
infringement where it's over a certain percentage
that they're claiming is very similar to their
game. And kind of the point I was getting at
is there's so many games in the slot sector,
which you can't get under that 30%, I don't
think. If it was a 30% margin, because everyone's
trying to create an Aztec game. Everyone's trying
to create. some type of genre, if it's a fishing
game, if it's a fruits game, and then when you
look at mechanics themselves, there's very
little similarity within mechanics. Like there's
tweaks to make them different. You had the
big mega ways one, which broke the boundaries,
but then what you've got cluster pops, pop
wins as well from Avatar UX, it's very similar.
You have tumbling mechanics, which are just
avalanche mechanics. I mean, they're so different.
Well, and this was kind of addressed in the
lawsuit to where Light and Wonder was saying,
you know, it's not a trade secret if you can
reverse engineer something. So if you can watch
a game and be like, oh, you know, these things
fall and you figure out a way to make them fall,
you can't call that a trade secret. But what
aristocrat was saying was the specific payout
frequency and that sort of thing, you can't
reverse engineer that. And so it does. I mean,
Light and Water was trying to argue this stuff
wasn't trade secrets to begin with. And really
this one's a bit different from the Evolution
one in that they're kind of claiming malfeasance
that they hired this person to create this
game for them versus, you know, the Evolution
one seems more like a copycat lawsuit. Yeah.
I think that whole person being involved in
the whole story kind of leans towards aristocrat
in some way, which interesting to see what'll
happen there. Again, I think when you say you
can't reverse engineer kind of like payments
side of things, I'm like, is that not what
RTP and volatility is in general anyway? I mean,
you can, is it public knowledge that the RTP
of a slot is 83%? Sure. How a machine specifically,
how often it hits, you know, one bonus or the
other to get to 83% is the part that can't be.
like just watching the game, you can't necessarily
reverse engineer. Does that make sense? Yeah,
it does. I still think that kind of for me,
that still ties into kind of the volatility
level of an actual slot itself, because the
higher volatility slots, the less frequent you're
going to get an actual hit, lower volatility
you do. But I kind of get the point. You can't
reverse engineer it, but they're the whole
points of volatility and RTP linking them together
to kind of create the outcome of you're going
to get paid more, you're going to get paid less,
but bigger wins. You might understand the brief
more than I did. Like the legal part was what
I kind of followed. It's, you know, the things
about like hit frequency and stuff like that,
that's in there. Um, that's a little more dense
for my knowledge. If it wasn't the Lisbon event
and my morning wasn't filled so much with like,
uh, video interviews, I really wish I could
just sit down and look at that brief. And it's
something I'm going to do cause I think we should
probably touch on it. I get in more detail
once as I mean, these are going to be a big
deal once they come to fruition. You know,
to give people kind of a timetable on this,
by the way, these suits take months. And really,
a lot of what has been procedurally happening
since it was filed in March was there's a motion
to dismiss and then light and wonder lost that
essentially there was some technicality things
that by and large aristocrat was granted the
right to move forward. Now by and large aristocrat
has won its challenge that like you can't do
this while we figure Next is the process that's
called discovery, where each group has to kind
of provide all of the evidence that they would
potentially use in the case. So that takes an
incredibly long time. And because it's highly
sensitive material, there's a whole other level
of bureaucracy to this where, um, there's a
lot of motions to seal and to keep confidential
and that sort of thing. So I think we're a
very long way from a conclusion, which means
for light and wonder if they lose the appeal
on the injunction, a very popular game is going
to be off the books for them for potentially
a long period of time. Mason- Yeah, interesting
developments. I think for me, this is going
to be interesting once it comes to a conclusion,
if it goes into aristocrats way, I think it
sets a precedent then. And like I started with
the show saying, from my point of view, there's
so many potential copyright infringements within
slots. I'm curious if this is going to open
a gateway for a lot of other companies. We definitely
will see and we'll be keeping an eye on it.
definitely in America's casino beats as a version
of this as well. Yeah. Guy gaming daily. I
will be keeping an eye on this for our gaming
daily because this is my bread and butter.
I love it. Um, but we're going to take a quick
break and then when we come back, Callum Williams
is going to step forward more. I'm going to
talk a bit about the payments. So that's happening
today. Um, yeah, today is today. Yeah. Today
at the Lisbon event. So stay tuned. Welcome
back. Like I mentioned before the break, we're
going to be talking payments summit. And this
is an interesting one, Callum, because we've
never actually done a payment summits before.
the any events I don't think have we? Yeah,
we've had payments. We've had payments tracks.
Tracks, yeah. We've had payment tracks and payments
panels and stuff like that, but never really
a dedicated payments summit, which obviously
is named after payment expert our site, which
is just a kind of almost a testament to the
growth of the site and how well it's performed
over the past couple of years. So yeah, it's
really pleasing to see that type of branding
there as well. Yeah. I mean, payments has just
been something that's been growing and growing
since I joined. certainly in the casino sector
as well, like it's huge and you then you involve
crypto into the scene, which I'm not going to
pretend I'm going to be a crypto expert here.
I may have dabbled, but like nothing on you
Callum, but just give us an idea of some of
the interesting conversations that have been
happening today anyway, because I know you've
been on the panel session, but also give us
an idea of a general trend that's happening
within the payment sector. Yeah. Well, I sat
in the first opening Pimp Experts Summit panel
regarding mature markets It was funny because
some of the panellists didn't really have an
answer to the mature markets. They kind of almost
said there are no mature markets when it pertains
to regulatory requirements involving both the
gambling and the payment industries, which
is in fact all fair enough. There really isn't
because regulations are just so ever evolving.
Whether you want to talk about the gambling
white paper in the UK in terms of affordability
checks and then payments. There's the payment
service director three that's about to come
into Europe obviously following the back of
PSD2 which introduced open banking regulations
and regulations to instant payments. And so,
yeah, that was a really good conversation,
which was moderated by Andrew McGeech and I've
seen Neosurf, I'm sure you'll... I game in
daily. We're a big fan of Neosurf and Andrea.
Yeah. Shout out to Andrea. But no, yeah, there's
also representatives from Leo Vegas. Also, there
was some representatives from Trustly as well.
Just kind of giving the whole operator supplier
dynamic in terms of how an operator and supplier
can help one another in terms of... not only
adapting to these mature markets, but also
emerging markets as well. Like Brazil, for instance,
that's a market that's about to explode in
the sports betting aspect. So yeah, they're
really trying to figure out that fine balance
between what can the gambling operators help
for payment operators to enter these markets,
but then how can they remain compliant as well
with the regulators? Yeah. I've had a few conversations
already today when I was doing interviews and
the our interviews is, it baffles me because
I don't know, I felt like I was in the belief
that crypto was kind of on the decline a bit.
I don't know if it's getting a second wave and
what's it called, the bull run or something
like that? Mason- Well yeah, the bear market
is when it's down, it's declining and the bull
market is when it's on the up. I mean yeah,
it was the fair to say the crypto market was
almost seemingly dead during 2022 and 2023 because
of the high profile collapses of FTX and Terraluna,
that just kind of... implemented the market,
it's lost all investor confidence. But I think
what you may be hearing from some of these gambling
operators now is the interesting crypto as
a payment method, because it just provides so
many beneficiaries when it pertains to instant
payment, like it happens in mere seconds. It's
just something that's not... There's instant
payments within Europe and within SEPA and stuff
like that, but crypto is a peer-to-peer transaction
with no intermediaries involved. That is just
a quick transaction that will easily just grant
player, for instance, instant gratification,
whether it's deposits or whether it's payout
as well. So crypto was a payment method initially.
That was what crypto was meant to be when Bitcoin
came about in 2008. It was meant to be this
pure peer-to-peer transaction. Now it's just
being used for investor and stuff like that.
I'm going to ask the noob question. So if you're
a payments processor, how do you make money
on a peer-to-peer crypto exchange if the idea
is... that there's not an intermediary. Mason.
That would be, that is a good question to be
fair, Jess. I mean, it's something that a gambling
operator may have to partner with a crypto
payment merchant or a crypto payment provider
and there may be some beneficiary there. I
think that's a good question because there hasn't
really been a good example of that, to be honest.
But it is something that when crypto was first
introduced, it was meant to be this peer-to-peer.
transaction, like no intermediaries, no banks
involved. So it's interesting to see that some
of these payment service providers, I mean,
I know Revolut of the UK, Fintech Revolut,
they're heavily invested into crypto in terms
of trying to make it as a crypto payment method.
And it just because of the benefits it provides
the users. And at the end of the day, they
want the users to be happy. They want to come
back and use their type of services. So I've
seen, I had a conversation with a company, I'm
not going to say who they are because You're
just all sorts of mystery and intrigue today.
I'm not name dropping anyone, but yeah, I learned
a few things. Um, but we had a conversation
because of the new European regulations coming
through, they've had to change their whole business
model of how they adapt. So instead of being
that kind of middle person for a transaction
between operators and kind of companies, they're
now becoming more crypto consultants and kind
of helping operators around the new regulations.
Would that be in Mika? Is that? That's the European
framework that's coming in December. It's basically
the first type of comprehensive crypto regulatory
framework where it requires listings and it
requires you need licenses now to operate in
some of these markets. I do believe there was
one, it was Tether, which is the largest stablecoin
issue in the world. They're European stablecoin,
which is picked to the European fiat currency,
the Euro. I'm going to nod and say yeah, like
I know what you're talking about right now.
It's basically, it's a crypto, a stablecoin
is basically a crypto currency that's tethered
to a real life currency like the Euro, so it
maintains its stability. Okay, yeah. They're
being more pushed as a payment method for instance,
because there's no volatility involved. That's
for the altcoins kind of thing. So like the
doges, the... No, they're just meme coins, they're
just... They're quite volatile though, they're
the altcoins. Oh yeah, they're extremely volatile.
Is that the official term, meme coin? The glorified.
get rich quick schemes really. But yeah, Mika
is very, very important to how crypto in the
future, in Europe especially, is going to be
viewed as a type of payment product because
they have to be regulated now, these tokens.
Well, and I can see the ancillary effects too,
that if it is successful then operators in other
markets like the US that are very resistant
to crypto will be like, okay, well here's one
way that you could do it. And I know... For
me at least, when I speak with smaller operators,
the number one thing they say is the biggest
reason we can't be profitable is because our
payment processing charges are just through
the roof. Yeah. What is it in the US? Is it
different to the European ones, isn't it? PayPal
is a big one. Is it the interchange fees with
MasterCard and Visa? Yeah, and then credit
card fees and that sort of thing. But you get
a payment processing company to handle all
those. PayPal gets very expensive and it's one
of those like, you can get reduced rates if
you're going in bulk, but small operators that
are in two states, three states is just very
difficult. So, the opportunity to get a peer
to peer fee, fun method without that kind of
fee. It's just very difficult for small operators.
I mean, licensing and all the other things
on top of payments fees, but they say payments
fees are the worst. Mason. We recently did
a report from Capgemini as well, telling of
their payments review of 2025, and they highlighted
account-to-account payments, A2A payments, as
this surging favourable payment method among
users, which completely takes out those interchange
fees from Visa and Mastercard. pretty much
established that this could represent a billions
upon billions and billions upon billions of
losses in interchange fees for the lights of
visa and mastercard. So there's something to
watch out if, um, if operators are starting
to get a bit, a bit, um, a bit worried about
some of these attached fees. I'll leave the
link to that article in the description for
this podcast via, um, we are going to round
up though and finish off. But before we do,
Callum, give us a rundown of what listeners
who are attending the event can expect from
the payment expert summit. Yeah, we, uh, will
the team, me, Ted, I'm Clay and Kieran O'Connor.
We're pretty much covering most of the panels
here at the SPC Summit, Payment Expert Summit.
Yeah, there's, and then maybe moving away from
Payment Expert as well, we're also covering
some of this stuff on the Superstage, you know.
Luis Figo and the new UFC Bantamweight Champion
Mirab. I can't remember his last name. Oh, I
was like, oh, are you one of the MMA people
in the team too? I do like me UFC, but I think
Joe's, I think Joe's are. Yeah, I'm more of
a boxing man then. Yeah, true. Yeah. And then
just, yeah, keeping, uh, keep an eye out for,
on a payment expert for some of the, uh, the
good panels and good interviews you might have
on the way. I brought my Tony Hawk on the ground
too. So hopefully Tony Hawk can sign that for
me. You want to try and get an autograph? Yeah.
And then sell it anyway. Big fan of Tony Hawk.
Big fan of him when I was younger. Um, but we're
going to round up today. So Callum, Jess, thank
you for joining us today and have a good rest
of your week in Lisbon and to listen out there,
tuning to, and to the listeners out there tuning
tomorrow where I'll be back. on the conference
room floor at SBC Summit. Until then, thank
you.