Category Archives: Gambling

Bankers Predict the 2022 World Cup

The World Cup starts on November 20, in Qatar with the hosts playing Ecuador. A few bankers, economists and financial minds and machines have made predictions about the winners ahead of the month-long tournament that features 32 nations, with Cameroon, Ghana, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia representing Africa. 

Who will win?

  • BCA Research has the most comprehensive report of match picks, research methodology, group rankings, and past history, with insights that will be useful for gamblers e.g. “Teams with more players from the same club tend to perform better in the knockout stages.” They conclude that “on December 18, 2022, the world will watch a final between Argentina and Portugal” and the dream final between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo will be won by Argentina in a final match that has a high likelihood of being decided by a penalty shootout. 
  • Sports data producer OPTA, has used artificial intelligence that predicts Brazil will win the World Cup. (read more)
  • Lloyds Insurance picks England to win the World Cup over Brazil. Others which come close in their model, which also lists group and knock-out match winners, are France, Argentina and Spain. Senegal will make the round of 16 but lose to England.
  • Liberum predicts an Argentina win by defeating England.

Mixed Picks

  • From the UBS Athletes and Entertainers (A&E) strategic client segment, one analyst picks Argentina, over Brazil, and another picked England to win.
  • Saxo Bank predicts Brazil is ahead of Argentina (24% to 22%) in one model, and in another, the Netherlands (22%) is a clear winner. 

Other:

Bankers predict Euro 2021

The covid-delayed Euro 2020 soccer tournament kicks off tomorrow, on June 11, a year behind schedule.

Ahead of soccer tournaments in past years, several banks including Goldman Sachs, ING, Nomura, UBS and ABN Amro have all made predictions of who will win. There’s more attention and interest with global tournaments, such as the World Cup as the larger pool of diverse teams, including from Africa, make such banking predictions more exciting.

So far, only Goldman Sachs has had a statistical team and computers analyze and come up with match predictions. Their model and report shows:

  • Denmark, England, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain will top their groups. The nations will win all their group matches, except for Portugal.
  • The current European champions, Portugal, are in the tournament’s “group of death” that also features Hungary and perennial soccer heavyweights of Germany and France.
  • The tournament has matches in eleven countries because of covid-19, and playing at home will give an advantage to the home nations. All the group winners host games, along with cities in Russia, Scotland, Hungary, Romania and Azerbaijan.
  • Aside from being in the toughest group, France, winners of the 2018 World Cup, do not have home matches and enter the tournament with poor recent momentum. 
Will Giroud propel France forward?.
  • Belgium is the favourite of the Goldman Sachs model, as well as of many betting oddsmakers.
  • The final and semi-final are at Wembley in England, who will not feature, as they will have been knocked out by Spain in the quarter-finals, after defeating Germany.
  • The semi-final will see Belgium eliminate Portugal as Italy edge past Spain.
  • In the final, Belgium will defeat Italy, in extra time, and win their first Euro trophy.  

Sportpesa return flames out

Last Friday, there was a bold tweet by the CEO of Sportpesa announcing the return of the company to full business, with partnerships for sports development to follow.

This comes after a crackdown last year crackdown on gambling companies through a moral push, taxation claims and difficulties renewing licenses, which all led many of the top betting companies to scale back their sponsorships and operations.

But the announcement, just as the English and European soccer leagues that are popular with betting punters get into gear, was followed by a surprising turn of events.

The following morning, the Chairman of the Betting Control and Licensing Board had a press conference and issued a statement about information that Sportpesa Global had granted to Milestone Games permission to operate as ‘Sportpesa’. It went on to say that had licensed Milestone to operate in the country, but asserted that Sportpesa is owned by Pevans East Africa and that no other company can use its name brand, domains and mobile phone shortcodes – asked directed Milestone to use its own website.

https://twitter.com/Kenyafootball/status/1322443008504139777

Then over the weekend, one of the other Sportpesa shareholders, Paul Wanderi Ndung’u also released a statement on behalf of Kenyan shareholders of Sportpesa and said he had been unaware of the developments with Milestone. He also made some serious claims about the company:

  • Said the problems of the company started in 2017 when its executive directors allied with its foreign shareholders and started running the company without reference to the board. 
  • Said that another director, Asenath Maina, had requested a forensic audit in 2019 on the firm, but that the foreign shareholders, who had been since been deported from Kenya, continue to frustrate the audit.
  • In three years Pevans East Africa (Sportpesa) has transferred $250 million to the Isle of Man, Dubai, the Canary Islands and the UK. Then, after the company closed, it transferred another $17.5 million to Sportpesa Tanzania and $0.5 million to Sportpesa South Africa.
  • KPMG and Deloitte &Touche have resigned as auditors and tax advisers respectively of Sportpesa Global in the UK, while PricewaterhouseCoopers resigned as the auditor of the Kenyan business.
  • Officers from the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) have visited Sportpesa’s Nairobi office – and this was linked to negative media and parliamentary coverage in the UK.

EDIT May 2022: In a case pitting Asenath Maina, a shareholder of Pevans East Africa Limited against former Sportpesa CEO, Ronald Karauri, a high court judge granted a temporary order restraining the transfer of “Sportpesa” trademark and brands to Milestone Games and Sportpesa Global Holdings. Also, did Sportpesa make a profit of Kshs 12.9 billion in five years? More here.

To be continued . .

Sports betting on ice as Sportpesa and Betin shut down in Kenya

On the last Saturday of September 2019, top sports betting companies, Sportpesa and Betin, separately announced an effective end of their operations in Kenya.

Sportpesa posted a statement on their site saying that Kenyan tax administrators had misunderstood revenue generation in the betting industry  – and that the company would halt all brand operations in Kenya as a result. Earlier, Sportpesa management, without citing  numbers, had said that they had settled all matters with Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), but have still been unable to obtain renewal of their license from the Betting Control and Licensing Board (BCLB)

Then last week on Wednesday, Sportpesa moved to lay off about 400 employees.

Meanwhile, Gamcode (trading as Betin Kenya) also issued a memo to all employees terminating their jobs as the company had not been operating since July 2019. They said they had been trying to resolve for three month’s as such all jobs would end on October 31.

Betin had several big media campaigns with Kenyan soccer star McDonald Mariga, who has unexpectedly stepped into politics and is now in the middle of campaigns to take up the vacant Parliamentary seat for Kibra constituency, following the death of popular MP, Ken Okoth.

By now, with the English Premier League on, local sports pages would have full-page colour advertisements of weekend and mid-week match betting odds and jackpot opportunities. Sportpesa also had significant spending in Europe sponsoring the Racing Point Formula One  team and Everton in the UK premier league and those teams still adorn  Sportpesa brands.

The claims of banning sports betting have been varied, with their destructive influence on young Kenyans, tax evasion and money laundering at different forums. Even a former Chairman of the Betting Control and Licensing Board, Kimani Kung’u, questioned whether non-payment and non-compliance with taxes was behind the freeze on the top betting companies.

In an interview with Radio Jambo in July, Kung’u said that the revenue of betting companies at the end of 2018 was between Sh20 billion and Sh25 billion and that there is no way that could have risen to Sh200 billion by mid-2019.


There have been three groups of companies: The group of 26 companies that were banned in July 2019 included: Mozzartbet, Sportybet SportPesa (Pevans E A Ltd), Betyetu (Oxygen & Gaming EA Ltd), Betin (Gamcode Ltd), Betway (Blue Jay Ltd), Easibet (Dreamcall Ltd), Betpawa (Gaming International Ltd), Betboss (White Rhino Ventures Ltd), Elitebet (Seal Capital Ltd), Dafa bet (Asian Betting & Gaming Ltd), Lucky 2 U, Cheza Cash (Sekunde Technologies), Palmsbet (Advanced Innovation Ltd), 1X Bet (Advanced Gaming Ltd), Saharabet (Sahara Game Technology Ltd), Bungabet (Galaxy Betting Ltd), Kick Off (Kick Off Sports Bar Ltd), Kenya Sports Bet, Eastleighbet (G&P Trading), and Premier Bet Ltd.

Those reportedly cleared later by KRA in July 2019 include Mozoltbet, East bet,  Lucky 2u, Eazi Bet, Kick off, Eastleighbet, Palms Bet, Bet boss, Betway, OdiBets, Mozzartbet and Ken Bookmakers.

Those xleared in August 2019 include Oyster, CityBet/EAF Galaxy, Shop & Deliver, Kareco, Playco, GrayHoldings/GameCo/Shabiki, NZ Mobile, Cheza Gaming, Hanstaunton Technologies/LottoCoLLP, and Zumabdu/Betlion.

None of the relicensed firms appears, so far, to have the impact and reach of Betin and Sportpesa.

Winners from the shutdown:

  • Moses Kemibaro has done a nice piece about the impact that the ban on Sportpesa and Betin has had on their web traffic and that of the other companies that have come to benefit from new betting activities, including Betika. He writes that “The biggest winners from Kenya’s sports betting armageddon are undoubtedly Betika, Odibets, MozzartBet Kenya and Kwikbet Kenya who have grown massively in terms of audiences and traffic during the last couple of months.”
  • The Internal Security Minister has said that Kshs 200 billion that was previously leaving the country through sports betting firms, is now being spent locally, boosting the local economy.

Losers from the shutdown include:

  • Media companies and newspapers: Gambling companies were among the top advertising spenders in the country up till this year. They would have about two color pages in all the newspapers, radio & TV ads, and several billboards across town. But as of this weekend, the newspapers are devoid of the advertisements except for small ones by Mozzartbet (for a 10 million jackpot for 50 shillings) and Betika (register and bet via USSD, with no data bundle required for a 100 million jackpot for 49 shillings). 
  • The Kenya Premier League, which is limping since it lacks a top sponsor. Sportpesa had stepped in after Supersport had pulled out in protest at an ill-advised decision by the league to increase the number of participating teams from 16 to 18.
  • Telcos: Bettors and betting companies generated messages with every bet that incurred fees and bets were settled by mobile money payments. While companies are considering cards as a payment option, that is a minority that lags compared to mobile money usage.

EDIT Oct 11 2019: 

Betin Kenya released a statement, saying that they, as a company, were fully tax-compliant, and that the betting industry had collectively paid Kshs 10 billon ($100 million) in taxes in 2018, but that the government had refused to renew its license, causing it to lay off its staff and shut down its retail outlets.

EDIT: Jan 14 2020

Betway announced a three year sponsorship of a soccer tournament that will feature 48 teams.

Media Moment: Kenya Landscape Report

This morning a, joint report by TIFA Research and Reelforge Media Intelligence was released about the media landscape in Kenya.

Excerpts from the report

  • Advertising remains a key source of revenue of media. Also the media, while still powerful faces many challenges including global competition for advertisers (Facebook and Google), and for consumers from other digital platforms.
  • Audiences are fragmented, with people interacting with five radio and 3 TV stations every day. TIFA has tried to improve on the traditional data collecting methods for audience measurement by using an app in the phones of test subjects.
  • For brands, Facebook is the most effective – used by 71% of corporations to reach audiences, followed by Twitter 26%. Least used are podcasts, email and surprisingly WhatsApp – despite its prevalence (all below 2%).
  • Social media and content marketing are the most effective ways of reaching consumers, according to the report. The least effective methods are email campaigns, public relations and outdoors advertising (all below 8%).
  • Whatsapp and Facebook are the most popular platforms with internet audiences – used by over 80% of the respondents – and this is largely because they are free from Telecom providers.
  • The top media spender in 2019 is projected to be Safaricom with Kshs 9.7 billion. In 2018 it was gambling company Tatua which spent Kshs 5.3 billion. In 2017 it was the Government of Kenya which spent Kshs 8.6 billion in that was an election year. Spending by gambling companies has been on the rise with half of the top advertising companies now being betting firms.
  • Radio remains attractive because it is free for audiences access. It also had the has the highest advertising over the period – mainly by political parties during the  2017 Kenya elections.
  • Newspaper circulation continued to decline, and the authors estimated at circulation went down by 33% between 2013 and 2018.
  • Digital migration has increased the reach of TV. Today, Kenya has 173 radio stations, 68 TV stations and 9 newspapers. 

The report by TIFA and Reelforge is now available for download.