Hotline

About Hotline

Spectrum Gaming Group’s 2022 report, which sits at the heart of the long-running dispute between the major games suppliers, has been unsealed as part of Evolution’s legal case against Black Cube.

Black Cube, an intelligence firm hired by Playtech in 2020 to look into alleged illegal behaviour at its rival Evolution, released a divisive report into Evolution’s actions. Evolution denied and refuted much of its findings.

Evolution then commissioned Spectrum Gaming Group to produce a report on its actions and the validity of the Black Cube report. Produced in 2022, the report has long been subject to confidentiality despite Evolution claiming the report exonerated the company.

How to play Hotline

Across the market, operators delivered high double-digit gains compared with Labor Day weekend, which featured a full slate of college football games but no NFL contests. Two operators, DraftKings and Underdog each saw triple-digit growth, delivering weekly increases of 125% and 119%, respectively. Three others, Polymarket, Crypto.com and Novig, saw gains of at least 30%, led by Polymarket with a weekly increase of 46%.

One interesting nugget surrounds weekend figures at Kalshi, where volume on Sunday only surpassed prior daily activity by $34 million, BofA data shows. Typically, Sunday volume for the quarter dwarfs that of College Football Saturdays due to the voracious demand for NFL offerings. BofA analyst Shaun Kelley attributes the irregularity to the possibility that Kalshi is “over indexing” on college sports.

Kelley also cited improvements at Robinhood as a possible factor for the regression at Kalshi. Just before the NFL season, Robinhood took a minority stake in Crypto.com and struck a deal to begin routing NFL contracts to OG.com, the site’s regulated prediction market platform.

What is Hotline?

“People are constantly debating what’s going to happen next with their friends and sharing predictions in group chats,” said Travis VanderZanden, who serves as chief growth officer at Polymarket. “With Squads, we’re bringing the conversation and trading together so friends can follow the events they care about and make their predictions in one place.”

Taking a page from a number of humourous Nike commercials during the 1990s, along with a farcical spot aired by the NFL during Super Bowl LIII, Berg injected slapstick comedy into the ad in an apparent attempt to cater to sports fans.

Within a common area inside the Polymarket headquarters, Manning skied high to catch a ball from a jugs machine, while he withstood a low tackle from a defender. “Good morning, Eli,” James proclaimed, before the two-time Super Bowl MVP tossed him the football outside an elevator adorned with the Polymarket logo. Seconds later, James exchanged a handshake with Jeter, a Hall of Fame shortstop who won five World Series titles with the New York Yankees. Last month, the Yankees became the first Major League Baseball club to directly partner with Polymarket.