Winter Champions

About Winter Champions

Yaxley adds: “The most meaningful measure of progress is not simply who joins an organisation, but whether opportunities, development and leadership pathways are accessible to everyone.”

Despite the progress made, interviewees agree there are still areas where the gambling industry has work to do.

“I believe there is still work to be done to ensure diversity is fully reflected at every level of an organisation, particularly within senior leadership and executive positions,” Yaxley says.

What is Winter Champions?

When I joined CalvinAyre.com in August of 2009, there was an enormous gap in the industry for an honest, transparent news site with regular, fresh video content. Over time, we grew from a tiny team of a handful of people to dozens, providing the industry with the juiciest breaking news and cutting-edge video coverage. 

Today we pass on the torch to our event organizing and media production friends who have more recently developed outstanding news coverage and video teams dedicated to the gaming space, hopefully who I’ll be seeing at CoinGeek Conferences in the future.

Reflecting on my fateful words at EiG back in 2013, it was the entrepreneurial energy, the innovation and the excitement surrounding Bitcoin that originally drew me to it. Back then, the obsession about Bitcoin was not related to price, it was about the disruptive technology and this is what meant something to me. While a great deal has changed in Bitcoin between 2013 and now, the energy, innovation and excitement are all still there and I am looking forward to the next chapter of my career with Calvin Ayre and the Ayre Media team.

About Winter Champions

“With the combination of Lottomatica and Cirsa, two extremely successful companies, we create the undisputed leader in Italy and Spain, among the best gaming markets globally, complemented by leadership positions in other very high growth geographies,” he said.

Cirsa CEO Antonio Hostench added: “I am delighted to embark on this exciting journey together. The combination of Cirsa and Lottomatica creates a world-class diversified gaming leader with leading positions across its core markets and significant opportunities to accelerate profitable growth.”

Lottomatica will absorb Cirsa though an EU cross-border statutory merger, with Lottomatica continuing as the surviving entity.