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How to play Mental 2
Entain’s removal from the FTSE 100 is a telling sign of what has happened to gambling stocks across both Europe and the US in recent years. The company’s shares have fallen sharply over the past year, even as its first-half results showed continued growth in several important markets.
In the six months to June, Entain’s online net gaming revenue rose 7% in constant currency. Revenue in Britain and Ireland increased 13%, while the company maintained its full-year guidance for online net gaming revenue growth of 5% to 7%. So why is its stock price still so under pressure?
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.
How to play Mental 2
Committee Chair Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede highlighted that, since 2020, the growth of online marketing techniques and associated harms have shifted the debate substantially.
“The time was right to reassess this crucial policy area, focusing on the topic of gambling advertising where the former committee’s strong recommendations have been largely unaddressed and where substantial developments in the gambling advertising landscape since 2020 have demanded a re-evaluation of the policy options,” he said.
The committee has advocated for applying a public health framework to gambling advertising regulation. It criticised the existing patchwork of self-regulation, noting the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) codes, co-regulation for broadcasts and industry-led voluntary measures, were inadequate.
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Both Squires and his predecessor, Coke Morgan Stewart, made it harder for filers to get in front of the PTAB, typically citing patent ages or court rulings.
In April, Interactive Games LLC, a unit of Cantor, sued DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment’s FanDuel, alleging the two largest domestic online sportsbook operators infringed on its patents. That suit arrived a decade after Interactive Games brought similar litigation against the sports wagering giants, which was challenged by both companies.
In the suit brought earlier this year, the Cantor unit accuses the two gaming companies of infringing on five of its patents and requested an undisclosed amount of financial damages.
