Spinman

About Spinman

Group income reached R6.58 billion ($411.9 million) across the first half of the year when excluding the Table Bay Hotel (TBH), which the company is running under a management agreement with IHG.

Sun International’s adjusted EBITDA (excluding TBH) edged up 2% to R1.59 billion in H1. Revenue growth was at the “upper end of expectations”.

H1 growth was driven by Sun International’s online division, with revenue from SunBet surging 35.5% year-on-year to R1.18 billion.

How to play Spinman

“We continue to view regulation as the largest risk to prediction markets,” says the analyst. “While industry growth remains robust, adverse legal outcomes could materially impact sports contract availability and long-term adoption.”

Amid a string of losses in federal appellate courts, it appears increasingly prediction markets are angling to take their cases to the U.S. Supreme Court, banking that the high court will allow them to continue offering sports event contracts free of state gambling regulations.

Some legal experts and members of the investment community believe it’s possible the Supreme Court could hear a prediction market case at some point over the next six or seven months.

What is Spinman?

The proposal establishes criteria for classifying products according to their potential for harm. Among the characteristics considered are instantaneous or short-lived results, continuous repetition at short intervals, use of random mechanisms to determine the outcome, intermittent rewards, near-miss incentives, incentives to recover losses and features that make it difficult to stop betting or induce successive, impulsive, or increasingly valuable bets. 

Products offered to the public must undergo prior evaluation by a competent body of the Federal Executive Branch, to be defined in regulations. Products classified as high-risk will be subject to specific harm reduction measures. Products with excessive risk may not be offered. This category includes products with outcomes determined by random mechanisms, continuous cycles and variable rewards, such as roulette, slot machines, collision games and simulated virtual sports. 

Furthermore, the text maintains obligations for monitoring and institutional cooperation, with the provision of aggregated and anonymised data to the competent authorities. It also provides for actions by the executive branch aimed at monitoring the impacts of betting, training health professionals, updating care protocols and periodically disseminating information on the effects of the activity.