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How to play Mermaids
As the annual US Sports Equinox nears in the coming weeks, a contingent of professional sports leagues made waves on Tuesday with the release of a groundbreaking collaboration aimed at curbing harassment of athletes from frustrated bettors.
At a time when sports betting and predictions have reached a fever pitch, the majority of the country’s most prominent sports leagues, along with their player unions, sent a memo dated 15 September to a contingent of 35 state gaming authorities. Among proposed regulatory actions, the leagues recommend mandatory lifetime bans for individuals deemed to have “abusively harassed or issued threats of violence” against any professional athlete.
The leagues, including the National Basketball Association and the National Football League, submitted the memo as Texas Senator Ted Cruz works assiduously to pass a landmark federal framework for college athletics. While the NCAA is not a signatory to Tuesday’s letter, the advisory also urges states to pass mandatory bans for individuals who threaten “amateur athletes” along with coaches, officials and team personnel.
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The report’s authors noted that VIP managers “are not asking to be replaced” but desire tools that assist by triaging and pointing out priority players, while humans maintain relationship control and make final decisions.
Respondents identified several priorities for improving VIP operations. These included an integrated system combining player data, communication history and task management.
Respondents also requested structured and consistent guidelines with key performance indicators aligned to relationship outcomes. Real-time, detailed data alongside predictive behavioural signals also came up as a frequent answer.
How to play Mermaids
Many top gaming stocks have underperformed relative to the broader market in recent years, and most of the M&A activity has been facilitated by private equity and other institutions that can more readily capitalise on depressed valuations. There had been hope that rates would start to fall and help alleviate those pressures.
“Publicly traded valuations are a reflection of the current interest rate environment,” Chad Beynon, lead gaming analyst for Macquarie, told iGB. “Whether it’s a long-term financial model on a growth company, you’re going to discount that back at a higher rate, or if it’s just a standard four-wall business, the cash flows in a higher interest rate environment are worth less.”
According to data from Yahoo Finance, the resort and casino sector is -41% over the last five years, and the overall gambling sector, which includes major sportsbooks and online operators, is +7%; the benchmark S&P 500 index, by comparison, is +71% during that span.
