Ballin

How to play Ballin

“It becomes less about how many developers you employ and much more about how creative you are and how well you understand the player,” Curwen says.

For an industry already producing content at enormous scale, that distinction is important. The promise of Game in a Box and Studio in a Box is not simply that they can help put even more games into an already crowded market.

Instead, Curwen hopes that by removing some of the cost and risk that have traditionally surrounded development, creators will have greater freedom to take chances on what they produce.

What is Ballin?

Ahmed Badawi, who chairs the House communications committee, said in May that the government would amend the anti-cybercrime law to name online betting explicitly. Life imprisonment was discussed for the gravest offences. No bill number or text has been published.

A separate private member’s bill was tabled by MP Martha Mahrous in January 2025. It proposed prison terms of two to five years and multi-million-Egyptian-pound fines for promoters, agents and payment facilitators. It has also gone nowhere.

Parliament rose on 22 July having passed 162 laws, none concerning betting. Egyptian news outlet Al-Watan reported that electronic betting was still among the committee’s files awaiting discussion on 17 August, listed separately from the cybercrime amendments. The House reconvenes on 1 October.

What is Ballin?

In recent weeks, German authorities conducted a crackdown on an alleged illegal online gambling operation suspected of facilitating wagers totalling approximately €5.86 billion over a 30-month period.  

The DSWV trade body, representing licensed sports-betting operators, broadly welcomed the enforcement action as a necessary response to the illegal market’s growth and associated risks. 

“This successful investigation clearly demonstrates the scale that the illegal gambling market has now reached,” said Mathias Dahms, president of the DSWV.