The eighth issue of the iGaming News digest.

XQC has criticized Pragmatic Play. Felix Liangjel, a Canadian internet streamer and former professional Overwatch player and avid casino enthusiast.

During his latest stream on Stake.com, Felix played the slot FirePortals by Pragmatic Play for an hour and a half, and he severely trashed the game provider. He mentioned that this was the third consecutive losing session in Pragmatic Play slots, and here are a few fragments from the stream.

Just as the streamer was about to wrap up the stream and go to sleep, he discovered that his gaming account on Stake.com had been blocked. He then expressed his thoughts about Pragmatic Play with the following wonderful words.

I asked our close friend Erdem, Head of Influence, Royal Partners, for a couple of comments on this news.

Hello Anton, I watched the snippet, and of course, the streamer severely insulted the game provider in general and did not recommend it to his audience, which is quite large considering he has been on exclusive with Stake for a couple of years. You probably know that Stake Casino is closely working with the provider Pragmatic, as they have a whole large series of exclusive games, and of course, Pragmatic is keenly watching how streamers on Stake play and what they say.

The point is that any provider in live games and slots cares about its reputation and how its games are presented. Of course, they quickly respond to such big players and ask for negative issues to be addressed, but since the streamer is not addressing the situation, the only way is to block his account to avoid further provoking negativity. But in reality, we condemn such actions, it would be better not to do this for fruitful earnings.

There have been precedents for blocking users and blocking games in certain slots, as stipulated in the rules of all services in partnership programs and in the regulations of the operators themselves, because if a user dislikes something and clearly expresses negativity about the game or insults the employees of the service, any company will react with either blocking or terminating the partnership.

But the main issue here is that this streamer is not just a player expressing his opinion; he is under a large advertising contract and is showing disrespect to his partner and the partner’s service. He could have reacted differently, saying that he just had bad luck with the game, but not flooding the whole provider with negativity and recommending to his users not to play this game, even though it’s just a game.

Beeling Cat and Josimar conducted a joint investigation into amateur leagues broadcasted on 1xBet. It is worth noting that reports about suspicious amateur tournaments on 1xBet have been circulating for many years, and in 2019, the Sunday Times found that 1xBet was accepting bets on cockfighting and sports events involving minors. As a result, top football clubs Chelsea, Liverpool, and Tottenham stopped collaborating with the site gaming operators.

It is evident from the players that they are bored, uninterested, and about to fall asleep, so there’s no motivation to win. The investigation claims that different people played for the same teams, and that athletes were assigned predetermined actions. The sports events themselves took place in schools, gymnasiums, and various sports venues in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus.

Soon, a representative from 1xBet gave an interview to Sigma World, where he rejected the accusations against 1xBet. He stated that 1xBet operates within the legal framework and has no involvement in organizing these tournaments. The organization of the events is done by third-party providers who supply video streams to the operator, and in turn, the operator accepts bets on them.

Additionally, the investigation mentioned that in order to save costs, teenagers were actively recruited, some of whom were only 14 years old. Regarding the team names, which were identical to real ones, the representative replied that in some jurisdictions, this indeed contradicts copyright laws, and they have already sent letters to the streaming providers to correct this issue. Who to believe: Beeling Cat and Josimar? It’s up to you to decide.

Kick set a record for viewer activity. On October 21, the streaming platform owned by the gaming operator Stake.com broke two personal records. The first being that Latin American streamer Westcol gathered over 1 million viewers during the stream of the streamer boxing tournament Streamfighters 3. The second record was that, at the same time, there were more than 1 million 750 thousand people on the Kick platform.

The event itself was sponsored by Stake.com, and we hope to see more such exclusive events. There are quite a few myths and rumors around Kick, particularly regarding the fact that they like to tweak online figures for their streamers. We hope this record isn’t fabricated and genuinely reflects the platform’s popularity, especially among Latin American residents.

If we look at SimilarWeb, we can see that the overwhelming majority of traffic to Kick still comes from Turkey, but we cannot ignore the significant growth observed in the LATAM regions.

A shortlist for Sigma Europe, which will take place from November 11 to 14 in Malta, has been published. Congratulations to our friends who have been nominated: Chilli Partners, 1xSlots, revenuelab., ClickLead, R2D, 22Bet, and, of course, ZMTeam.

As for the interesting part, the award for the best collaboration with an influencer will be contested between BGaming and their collaboration with Snoop Dogg. If you haven’t seen our previous episode where the guys comment on the process of developing a slot, you can check it out via the link in the comments. Other nominees for this category are Booming Games with their collaboration with Ronaldinho, Spribe with their collaboration with Alex Pereira, and, of course, 1xbet with Morgenshtern.

I’ll be flying to Malta myself, so if you’d like to meet me or give me a great interview, feel free to DM me. I’ll also be hosting two live streams on the iGaming News Telegram channel from both the B2B and B2C awards ceremonies.

Legal column iGaming News. Recently, our friends from 4H Agency informed us that a delegation of British and Maltese lawyers has arrived in Curaçao with the aim of closing down the main iGaming license distributor. Now the guys will tell you about how they work with the regulator and what’s happening in the licensing market of Curaçao.

Hello everyone! Ivan Kurochkin here, partner and head of the consulting department at 4H Agency. Listen, there was recently news that MJ and UKGC signed a memorandum of cooperation and mutual understanding.

Well, overall this isn’t something new. In the Western world, regulators love to exchange best practices on how they operate with each other, so to find all the illegal activities, just kidding, but of course, they want to share best practices and approaches to regulating the licensing regime. However, perhaps this news is not something groundbreaking, much more interesting is the situation when UKGC and MJ began cooperating with the Curaçao regulator, that’s where the main issue lies, and essentially, the time when Curaçao was a wonderful state where you could operate without problems has passed, and the requirements are tightening.

Moreover, it’s not just that they’re tightening, what’s most interesting is that Best Practices are now being transferred from the Western world to Curaçao, and I’ve already mentioned this in previous episodes, but what’s interesting is that in our daily work, we now face new UBO checks, new confirmations of funds, new confirmations about how the company will operate, I mean, where the money comes from, where the Lebowski money is, as they say, so we are entering a new life, new changes, which are already happening and being implemented, so it seems things will only get worse from here, but in general, I think Curaçao operations remain interesting, just more demanding. However, Curaçao’s reputation is rising, and perhaps more payment processors and providers will favor this license to enter the market.

It’s probably worth mentioning that in the context of what’s to come for the market, the main feature of Curaçao is still not removed, meaning it’s still possible to operate with this license in different markets, considering the petition risk, let’s say, of each operator, but the most important thing is that the regulation still doesn’t prohibit operations in multiple countries or even worldwide, although some countries are excluded from operations, but we all know that with some legal loopholes, one can manage.

It has become more difficult, but the main feature of Curaçao has not yet disappeared, although of course, many are now looking towards Anjoan, because it’s cheaper and simpler. In our opinion, it seems that Anjoan is experiencing the Curaçao story from before, but still, in some way, it will eventually lead to tightening, but for quick entry, Anjoan is fine, whereas Curaçao is more reputable, but still more payment processors and providers continue to favor Curaçao.

Have a great day, a good week, and stay in touch.

As tradition goes, a little bit of fun at the end. In Ukraine, the gaming license was indeed issued for Pre-Match operator, despite the ban from the Kiev court. Quite an interesting reality where gambling regulator decisions are above court rulings.

The good news is that in Ukraine, the arrest of Pin-Up’s 63 million dollars has been lifted. In April this year, the funds were blocked by state financial monitoring and transferred to ARMA to replenish the Ukrainian budget. We, in turn, congratulate Pin-Up on the wonderful conclusion of this story and look forward to meeting them on November 12th in Malta at the Pin-Up rave.

Thank you very much for watching, this is Anton Drozd, the editor-in-chief of iGaming_News, we hope you enjoyed our Halloween special.