The Knight King

What is The Knight King?

Betfred’s retail business still heavily depends on fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) and in-shop gambling. Despite the maximum stake limit being cut to £2 in 2019, FOBTs account for roughly half of Betfred’s shop profits. Done emphasised that without these machines, retail betting wass “impossible”.

According to Done, such a tax rise would lead Betfred to close 495 of its shops within a year, resulting in the loss of 2,575 jobs and roughly £67 million in foregone tax revenue for the Exchequer.

Betfred has already shuttered 132 outlets this year, following last year’s RGD increase.

How to play The Knight King

For Kambi, data must be combined with the knowledge of experienced traders who can direct the technology, scrutinise its output and identify where it can add value next.

“You don’t have to search high and low in this industry to find companies talking up the benefits of AI,” Lamb adds. “Realising them requires a combination of deep data and human expertise not everyone has access to, and there is no shortcut to acquiring.”

The World Cup proved Kambi’s AI could perform under the greatest pressure sports betting can provide. The next task is to turn that tournament performance into new, increasingly on-demand experiences for its partners and their customers.

How to play The Knight King

That is the gap Splash Tech solves: many operators already have strong game libraries, and some have proprietary content, but they lack a flexible jackpot layer that can sit across the full offering without requiring them to build and operate their own engine.

That supplier-agnostic design matters because operators do not organise their businesses around the interests of one studio. They assemble portfolios from multiple providers and need tools capable of working across the resulting patchwork. Splash Tech’s engine can also extend beyond slots to points of sale including sportsbook bet slips, lottery and bingo.

“Not making the product available across all game suppliers and all product verticals would be a massive missed opportunity,” Wilson explains. “Wherever you can have a player placing a bet, give them the opportunity to win on the jackpot engine because it is such a sticky product.”