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What is Bling Boyz?
Angelozzi is set to serve as the combined company’s chairman and CEO, while Lottomatica’s deputy CEO and CFO Laurence Van Lancker will assume the same role.
Hostench and Cirsa CFO Antonio Grau will also continue to lead the teams at Cirsa.
Following the deal’s completion and approval by Lottomatica’s general shareholder’s meeting, the combined company’s board would consist of the existing 11 Lottomatica directors, as well as two new directors nominated upon designation by Blackstone.
About Bling Boyz
Holland Casino was one of the first operators out of the gate when the newly-minted market opened in 2021, and while they don’t have the position they occupied in those early days, the company’s online offering is healthy. When they launched online, Petra says “we were very well known for – and are very well known for – responsible gaming.
“That was the reason why we joined [online as well as land-based]. But we were a full brick-and-mortar company so it took us some time to prepare for that market. In the beginning, the market share was of course higher because you only had 10 operators and we had a very well-known brand name, but now the market is much bigger and you have operators more specialised in sports betting and things like that. We have dropped down a bit.”
The Netherlands has a government that may be a little heavy handed, a regulator that knows this, and a monopolistic operator that’s trying to do its best for the customer. The industry is an active participant in trying to erradicate the growing illegal market. This week, state-lottery operator Nederlandse Loterij took action against the offshore operator behind the brand Skyhills, ordering them to cease serving Dutch players.
How to play Bling Boyz
Nor are regulatory breaches unique to gambling. Waugh notes that Tesco was fined more than £8 million for food hygiene failings in 2021, without parliamentarians demanding that it should be prevented from selling cornflakes.
“There are valid arguments to be made in relation to raising the barriers to licensing, but this may come at a cost of diminishing competition and entrepreneurship,” he says.
In any event, successive regulatory tightening and tax increases have already created a “reasonably effective deterrent” to market entry.
