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For now, the growth provides room for multiple market makers. Marantelli expects margins to “stay good during the growth period” before contracting as competition intensifies. The more complex RFQ and parlay markets may offer the best protection against that compression.

The result is an emerging ecosystem that looks less like millions of customers casually trading predictions with one another and more like an outsourced sportsbook trading room. Exchanges own the platform and recruit the customers; specialist firms price the risk and provide the money needed to make those markets function.

As Marantelli says: “Let’s call a spade a spade.”

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“What I do think is that deciding together, not only as operators, but together with politicians and stakeholders, that a legal market is very important to get that done. We’re not there yet, and that’s what we’re saying.

“An unregulated market doesn’t become a safe market. People will always gamble, so we have to make sure that we have a strong legal market. And so you also need to give us some room to exist. And of course, we need to be regulated. A regulated market is always better than an illegal market.”

She mentions an ongoing lawsuit against Meta, which will be expected to be very challenging. The VNLOK-filed litigation is seeking to take action against the illegal gambling ads allowed to filter through to consumers across Meta’s various platforms.

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“Where we’ll revisit the targets at the full-year results, I think that will probably be the logical time to more explicitly factor Brazil into any revised targets we might potentially issue at that point in time. But I think that should only enhance how the business is currently doing and frankly, enhance probably what the current market expectations are for the group in the years ahead.”

The ongoing dispute between Evolution and Playtech continues to rumble on.

Playtech commissioned intelligence firm Black Cube to investigate Evolution’s activities in 2020, with the resulting dossier alleging Evolution supplied games into banned and sanctioned markets.