The seventh issue of the iGaming News digest.
Enjoy watching!
Hello everyone, Anton Drozd here, Editor-in-Chief of iGaming News, and welcome to the seventh edition of our news digest.
Brazil and the iGaming Reform
Brazil is in the midst of reforming its iGaming sector. Previously, the Brazilian government announced that all operators who did not apply for licensing must exit the Brazilian market by October 10.
And then things got heated. The president is against it—he knows people who lost their cars and homes. In fact, he’s ready to ban all iGaming entirely if the reforms don’t work.
The Senate is conducting a four-month investigation into the connection between online gambling, local crime, and money laundering. On October 11, the local regulator published a list of more than two thousand domains to be blocked in Brazil. You can find the full list on our Telegram channel iGaming News using the hashtag “Brazil.”
Interestingly, the domain iGaming.smi.yoganet.com somehow made it onto that list. The partner site iGaming Brazil stood up for their industry colleagues and called on the entire Brazilian iGaming community to unite in defense against such baseless blocks.
Our friends from the Brazino 777 Insider channel shared some insider info about the Brazilian market. For instance, some operators will only work with affiliates that have a legal entity registered in Brazil. Also, some operators will stop using cryptocurrency for transactions and switch to bank transfers only.
There’s also info that some operators will keep their old partnership models but will re-sign contracts under new legal entities.
Shadow Bans on Telegram
Telegram has seen its first-ever wave of shadow bans. We all know shadow bans existed on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok—and now they’ve made it to our beloved Telegram.
Shadow bans hit everyone at once without any warning. All channels that had ever posted casino-related links disappeared from search results. Our channel was no exception, even though we never posted links to casino resources.
These were strictly PP or B2B products. Now, if you try to search for iGamingNews, you won’t find our channel. You’ll need to type iGamingNews with an underscore to locate it.
Alternatively, you can find the link to our channel in the comments. Then things escalated quickly—entire channels and chats started disappearing. Among the victims were influencers like Maksim Dovolny and Yoda Traffic, as well as services like AnyBill.
Comment from Maksim Dovolny
We contacted Maks Dovolny to explain what happened and how to protect your resources.
To be honest, it’s pretty hard to say what really happened, for one simple reason—Telegram support basically doesn’t exist. Even if you message them and wait, you’re likely not getting a response.
Support is, let’s say, one-sided. There are essentially two theories. The first one is mass complaints.
Someone might have found it beneficial to send a bunch of complaints, which led to a “Scam” label and Telegram deleting the account along with the chat, as in my case. Others, including card service providers and bloggers, lost not just their channel and chat, but many linked accounts as well. Some users believe this is due to a new AI—in other words, an error.
In trying to figure out what went wrong, I came across many people who offer services for taking down channels, chats, and personal accounts. They shared a few insights on why accounts might get taken down.
Based on that, here are some tips to protect your resources. First—try to host your assets on different accounts.So if you have several big channels and chats, divide them among accounts to avoid losing everything if one account gets hit. Next—if possible, keep the owner’s account invisible. Don’t chat from it, don’t log in from it, don’t click anything from it.
Keep the owner’s account as anonymous as possible—just log in occasionally. That way, you won’t trigger anything from the owner’s account. Usually, bans come from clicking suspicious links or interacting with bots. So don’t run unknown bots, especially from the owner’s account.
Always have a backup plan—if you can, add a few other accounts as admins with full rights. In my case, my owner account was deleted, but luckily there was another admin, which I now use. Otherwise, I would have lost access to the channel entirely. It would’ve kept running, but I wouldn’t have had control.
Taxes and Market Losses
Here we go again. In the UK, there’s a proposal to raise taxes on iGaming operators.
The Labour Party has introduced a bill suggesting higher taxes for high-harm gambling products. And—drumroll—guess what qualifies? Online casinos and online betting. Land-based operations, of course, are excluded.
The proposal would double the tax rate for iGaming operators from 21% to 42% of GGR. Lawmakers estimate this could bring £900 million to £3 billion into the treasury.
On October 11, amid the bad news for operators, the iGaming stock market saw a big red candle.
On average, company stocks dropped 10–15%, although about a third of that loss has since been recovered. But not for everyone—we feel for companies like Evoke.
Speaking of Evoke—if you look at the five-year chart, the company has lost 70% of its value and is now trading at 2010–2012 levels.
Taxes in Argentina
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, a similar tax proposal is underway. Authorities want to raise the tax for iGaming operators from 6% to 12%. The government plans to use these funds to develop social programs for those affected by gambling addiction.
PDD and Polymarket
Since our show now airs biweekly, let’s talk about P Diddy. We won’t dive into his long, dramatic story, but we do want to mention the Polymarket betting activity related to his arrest.
Polymarket is a platform for betting on political and pop culture events.
Regarding the P Diddy case, the platform offers four types of bets. The largest betting volume—$70,000—is on whether an adult video featuring Diddy will be released by the end of October. The next biggest market is whether Diddy will be released from custody by the end of October.
You can also bet on whether he will face new charges before November. And the most exotic bet—whether Joe Biden will somehow pardon P Diddy.
The Polymarket phenomenon fascinates me, so I went into iGaming Chat to ask platform owners if anyone plans to integrate such betting types.
I received no response.
Court Case: Parimatch vs Pre-Match
And now, something spicy to end with. A Kyiv court has prohibited KRAIL from issuing a license to the company Pre-Match.
You probably noticed how the name sounds suspiciously similar to Parimatch. The folks at Parimatch noticed too—and filed a lawsuit.
The court agreed that the name Pre-Match is too close to Parimatch and could mislead Ukrainian consumers, as well as damage the bookmaker’s business reputation.
Parimatch, under Rillius Holding Limited, also intends to ban LLC “Pre-Match” from using the name “Pre-Match” in any of its activities.
This was Anton Drozd, iGaming News—see you in two weeks. Is this episode 11? 11! That looks weird.