Circle Of Life

What is Circle Of Life?

A major advantage for traditional sportsbook operators is their ability to aggressively fund customer acquisition and retention bonuses. As EKG points out, prediction markets have “less ability to be generous with bonuses” because users trade against one another rather than against the house.

That creates a stark contrast during peak football season when traditional sportsbooks spend heavily on promotions. Offers ranging from $350 to $365 from major operators make the $25 to $50 promotional matches typically seen on prediction markets appear modest by comparison.

“That said, channel checks indicate prediction markets are spending heavily on digital marketing, including app stores and pay-per-click advertising, which could make our forecast look conservative by the end of the season,” EKG concluded.

How to play Circle Of Life

In Sweden, Spelinspektionen recently flagged affiliates and social media as key channels for black market advertising and how affiliate networks redirect search traffic towards unlicensed operators.

Regulators have so far focused mainly on monitoring paid advertising. In Germany, the GGL credited an updated Google ad policy with reducing black market visibility. Yet, it acknowledged that illegal operators could still achieve visibility in organic search through SEO manipulation. 

This points to a wider shift towards addressing organic search signals and domain-level practices such as doorway pages, an issue also raised in the UK, where research has linked black market migration to search-driven promotion and SEO exploitation.

How to play Circle Of Life

One answer is that the industry is no longer being valued primarily on the promise of endless growth. The market instead wants to see profit, cash generation and manageable regulation maintained across all facets of a listed business. Ed Birkin, managing director of H2 Gambling Capital, says the longer-term decline in gambling stocks runs much deeper than just changes to earnings forecasts.

“The industry share price declines have been much more severe than the cut to earnings projections which means that, while there may be some weakening in some companies’ fundamental growth drivers, the valuations that investors are putting on them have been the main driver of share price declines – although weaker fundamentals lead to lower valuations, so the reality is that they’re completely intertwined.”

Entain’s demotion comes after another – and arguably more significant – symbolic move by Flutter Entertainment. Flutter began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in January 2024 and later moved its primary listing from London to New York.