Jun26
Wall Street Ventures Into Sports Betting as Nasdaq and Interactive Brokers Sign Revolutionary Deals
August 19, 2019 Andrej Vidovic
Wall Street’s biggest and most successful companies are hopping aboard the expanding sports betting industry in the US. Case in point: Nasdaq Inc. and Interactive Brokers Group Inc have initiated sports betting platform deals, each with their own twist.
Stock market giant, Nasdaq, has formed an alliance with UK sports betting company, Football Index, to whom they will deliver a trading engine utilized on their numerous stock exchanges. Football Index is different from other betting operators in that their clients are able to place bets on future success of footballers.
The Market With Massive Potential
Since a wave of sports betting loosening regulations has swept across the USA…
…new opportunities for multi-faceted companies such as Wall Street institutions have emerged for them to bolster their financial operations. Their trading knowledge and know-how can provide an edge to traditional sports betting technology. As Microsoft Research economist, David Rothschild points out:
“The potential in sports is huge. The more legal it becomes, the more legal money that’ll flow into the pockets of the people who control the back-end infrastructure, as well as the front end.”
Nasdaq’s head of new markets, Scott Shechtman, said:
“We’re the heavy-duty plumbing that can sit underneath [betting systems]. We are not taking peoples’ bets. It’s a matter of providing technology.”
Brokerage Incentive
Several weeks prior to Nasdaq’s venture, it was Interactive Brokers that launched a simulated sports betting platform allowing its s to place bets on real games by using virtual credits that are provided by the company.
They are using this platform in order to persuade s into opening brokerage s. Namely, they can win up to $1000 in brokerage commission credits through this simulated platform.
Two Listings… and One Delisting
Over the course of the previous six months…
…Nasdaq has been busy welcoming gaming operators to their stock exchanges from Stockholm to New York. First, in March, it was Gaming Innovation Group that began trading on Nasdaq Stockholm under GIGSEK ticker code. This was seen as an opportunity to increase brand visibility on the market and put it closer to their peer group.
In May, Scientific Games’ subsidiary, SciPlay, followed suit and began trading on Nasdaq New York by launching 22 million shares of Class A common stock, with each share costing $16 each.
Cherry AB, however – right between these two events – requested that their shares are deed from Nasdaq Stockholm. As a cause for this, they cited the acquisition of more than 90% of shares by EEI Bidco consortium.
Source:
“Nasdaq and Interactive Brokers Become the Latest Wall Street Institutions to Enter into Sports Betting”, Niji Narayan, europeangaming.eu, August 16, 2019.
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This is cool, Wall St must be in touch with the trends and with what’s going on in order to be truly able to provide a substantial market overview of the sector.